>«y>> 


C.  BELA-C 

ookselUr  &•»  Sta 


DOMESTICUS 


DOMESTICUS 


A  TALE   OF  THE   IMPERIAL  CITY 


BY 

WILLIAM  ALLEN  BUTLER 


NEW  YORK 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

1886 


CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 


GRANT  &  F  AIRES 
PHILADELPHIA 


PS 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  I. 
A  NAMELESS  PRINCESS, 


CHAPTER  II. 
FIRST  DAY  WITH  DOMESTICUS,     .   .   .   . 


CHAPTER  III. 
A  NEW  DEPARTURE, 


CHAPTER  IV. 
THE  PRINCESS  PUGNAX,  ...............     29 

CHAPTER  V. 
WEIGHTS  AND  MEASURES,  ...............      36 

CHAPTER  VI. 
DOMESTICUS  AND  THE  CHILDREN,    .....   ......      43 

CHAPTER  VII. 
DOMESTICUS  AFRICANUS,     ...............      Sl 

CHAPTER   VIII. 
THE  STRIFE  OF  THE  SISTERHOOD,    ...........      61 


vi  COXTEXTS. 

CHAPTER    IX. 
COMING  AXD  GOING  OF  CONTRABANDS, 69 

CHAPTER   X. 
A  MALADROIT  PRINCE, 82 

CHAPTER   XI. 
JUVEXTUS, 99 

CHAPTER   XII. 
A  GRANDMOTHER'S  APPLE-PIE, 107 

CHAPTER   XIII. 
GLORIOSA, .    124 

CHAPTER   XIV. 
GOING  TO  THE  FRONT, 137 

CHAPTER   XV. 
A  BAD  NAME, 146 

CHAPTER   XVI. 
A  CATASTROPHE, 159 

CHAPTER   XVII. 
RIGHT  AND  WRONG  OF  DOWER, 170 

CHAPTER   XVIII. 
LEAVING  HOME, 189 

CHAPTER   XIX. 
AT  A  GREAT  SACRIFICE, 196 


CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  XX. 
THE  IMPERIAL  CITY'S  SHAME, 


CHAPTER  XXI. 

ELIVERANCES, 

CHAPTER   XXII. 
THE  VIA  SEXTA, 241 

CHAPTER   XXIII. 
A  MARRIAGE  NOT  A  LA  MODE, 256 

CHAPTER   XXIV. 
HOME  AGAIN, 

CHAPTER  XXV. 
LAST  WORDS, 


DOMESTICUS. 


CHAPTER  I.-- 

A   NAMELESS    PRINCESS. 

IT  was  in  the  p re-esthetic  period,  before  the  age 
of  Greenbacks,  in  the  Imperial  City  of  the  fair 
realm  of  Magna  Patria,  that  the  Little  Lady,  whose 
true  story  I  am  about  to  tell,  first  tripped  forth  on 
the  stage  of  social  existence.  Her  name  was  duly 
heralded  when  she  was  married,  and  it  will  doubtless 
be  duly  heralded  when  she  dies,  but  in  these  pages 
she  must  be  as  nameless  as  the  old  woman  who  lived 
in  a  shoe,  the  young  woman  who  walked  in  beauty 
like  the  night,  or  any  other  of  the  celebrities  of  her 
sex,  ancient  or  modern,  who  have  become  known 
to  fame  and  dear  to  memory,  but  who  have  never 
been  formally  introduced,  by  name,  to  any  circle  of 
their  admirers. 

Nor  is  her  personal  appearance,  at  any  point  of 
time,  to  be  made  the  subject  of  minute  description. 
Neither  her  face  nor  her  form  can  be  outlined  by 
pen,  pencil  or  sunbeam.  Imagination  may  picture 
her  the  fairest  of  blondes,  or  the  most  brilliant  of 


2  DO  ME  STIC  US. 

brunettes,  and  invest  her  with  all  the  charms  that 
were  ever  inventoried,  in  fact  or  fiction.  Possibly, 
all  that  fancy  shall  paint  her  will  fall  short  of  the 
original,  around  whose  loveliness,  as  well  as  lineage, 
must  be  drawn  a  light  veil  of  mystery  and  reserve. 
All  else  shall  be  plainly  told. 

To  begin  at  the  beginning,  our  Little  Lady,  like 
aU  heroines  of  history  or  romance,  was  born,  once 
upon  a  time.  If  ever  a  lucky  star  twinkled  over  an 
infant's  birth,  it  was  over  hers.  If  ever  babe  was 
born  with  a  silver  spoon  in  its  mouth,  she  had  a  set 
of  spoons  before  she  had  a  set  of  teeth.  All  the 
good  fairies  who  ever  hovered  over  a  sleeping  mor 
tal,  newly  laid  in  crib  or  cradle,  made  her  pillow 
their  daily  and  nightly  rendezvous.  If  Luxury  has 
a  lap,  she  was  dandled  in  it,  and  if  Fortune  carries  a 
horn  of  plenty,  it  was  emptied  at  her  feet. 

And  so  she  grew,  day  and  night,  in  sun  and 
shower,  through  all  happy  seasons,  the  birds  singing, 
the  flowers  blooming,  the  winds  blowing,  and  the 
earth  revolving,  for  her  special  satisfaction  and  de 
light,  while  Father  Time  counted  out  for  her  his  re 
serve  of  golden  moments,  with  reckless  generosity, 
she  spending  them  as  freely,  and  making  all  faces 
brighter,  and  all  hearts  happier,  wherever  she  came 
or  went,  as  child,  or  maiden,  until  a  merry  clanging 
of  bells  rang  in  her  wedding  day. 

For,  of  course,  as  the  Little  Lady  had  everything  in 
plenty,  lovers  were  not  wanting,  in  due  time.  The 
good  fairies  supplied  them  in  battalions.  Never 
was  fair  damsel  more  beset  by  wooers  and  when  at 


A  NAMELESS  FKINCESS.  3 

last,  she  was  won  and  carried  off  in  triumph  by  the 
favored  suitorj  it  was  over  a  legion  of  broken  hearts. 

The  good  fairies  would  have  been  strangely  delin 
quent  if  they  had  permitted  her  to  marry  lower  than 
a  Prince ;  and,  fortunately,  a  Prince  it  was  who 
became  her  lawful,  wedded  husband.  He  was  of 
the  ancient  and  most  honorable  line  of  Merchant 
Princes,  and  his  principality  consisted  of  a  vast 
stock  of  Dry  Goods,  the  staple  of  his  princely  house, 
whose  credit  and  renown  all  Magna  Patria  knew. 
He,  too,  had  been  under  the  fostering  care  of  good 
fairies,  and  was  supposed  to  possess  all  the  various 
qualities  out  of  which  Deportment  can  create  a 
model,  and  Business  a  success.  He  was  very  good- 
looking,  very  wise  and  very  rich,  and  he  had  a 
modest  palace  of  his  own,  on  the  Via  Quinta,  in 
the  Imperial  City.  So,  with  no  one  to  forbid  the 
bans,  this  happy  pair  were  wedded  ;  Love  and 
Friendship  pelting  them  with  flowers  and  pursuing 
them  with  rice,  old  slippers  and  horseshoes,  and 
loading  them  with  a  weight  and  wealth  of  gifts 
which  seemed  to  say,  in  the  language  of  convey 
ancers — "  Know  all  men  by  these  presents,  that  the 
Merchant  Prince,  party  of  the  first  part,  is  held  and 
firmly  bound  unto  the  Little  Lady,  party  of  the 
second  part." 

Now,  the  Little  Lady,  like  all  other  favorites  of 
good  fairies,  who  have  been  waited  upon  from  earliest 
infancy,  and  whose  ideas  of  labor  are  bounded  by 
the  latest  style  of  embroidery,  had  never  bothered 
herself  about  anything  under  the  sun.  Having  had 


4  DOMESTICUS. 

a  lovely  time,  all  her  life,  before  she  wedded  a  Prince, 
she  naturally  counted  on  having  a  still  lovelier  time, 
now  that  she  was  a  Princess.  The  first  item  of 
felicity  on  her  programme  was  a  honey-moon,  to  be 
spent  in  strange  lands,  far  over  sea,  and  this  was 
happily  accomplished,  without  a  drawback,  by  the  aid 
of  a  magical  contrivance,  at  the  Prince's  command, 
known  as  an  unlimited  letter  of  credit,  a  wonderful 
talisman  for  all  travellers,  in  Old  Worlds  or  New. 

But  our  Princess,  being  no  bird  of  passage,  and 
fondest  of  her  own  nest  and  nook,  looked  longingly 
and  lovingly,  from  mountain  top,  and  valley,  and 
gay  scenes  in  great  cities,  to  the  home  of  which  she 
hoped  to  be  the  mistress  and  the  household  of 
which  she  expected  to  be  the  head.  She  would 
often  sit,  in  silence  and  alone,  in  the  twilight, 
turning,  with  two  tiny  fingers  of  her  right  hand, 
the  plain  golden  circlet  upon  one  tiny  finger 
of  her  left  hand,  and  think  how  precious  a  symbol 
it  was  of  the  sacred  sphere  in  which  she  would  be 
invested  with  a  central  and  select  sovereignty,  and 
she  was  impatient  to  grasp  the  sceptre  and  begin 
her  gentle  reign.  The  happiest  hour  of  her  happy 
life  seemed  to  her  the  one,  in  which,  on  the  day  of 
her  safe  return — the  wide  ocean  and  the  broad  conti 
nent  left  behind  as  pleasant  memories — she  sat,  in 
the  quiet  evening,  at  her  own  table,  in  the  palace 
of  her  Prince.  He  had  prepared  a  rare  surprise  for 
her;  and,  by  means  of  messages  sent,  by  magical 
art,  under  sea,  long  in  advance,  had  so  arranged  as 
to  gather  around  his  board,  in  her  honor,  the  friends 


A  NAMELESS  PRINCESS.  5 

she  loved  best,  so  that  all  things  seemed  ready  to 
her  hand  and  heart,  and  she  had  only  to  seat  herself 
in  the  throne  and  be  Queen.  No  wonder  her  eyes 
sparkled  with  delight  and  her  cheek  glowed  with 
satisfaction.  And  when,  late  in  the  night,  after  the 
last,  lingering  guest  had  departed,  the  Little  Lady 
walked  up  and  down  the  stately  rooms,  pausing,  now 
and  then,  to  survey  herself  in  some  resplendent 
mirror,  as  if  in  reassurance  of  her  own  identity,  or 
to  toy  with  some  choice  souvenir,  or  sit,  for  a 
moment,  in  a  gilded  chair,  her  heart  was  well  nigh 
overflowing  with  happiness  and  hope.  She  could  not 
help  dancing  for  very  joy,  and  clapping  her  jeweled 
hands  she  cried  aloud — 

"  Now  I  am  going  to  keep  house ! " 

No  sooner  had  the  Little  Lady  uttered  these  words 
than  all  the  good  fairies,  who, as  we  have  already  seen, 
had  been  busily  engaged,  ever  since  she  was  born, 
in  buttering  her  bread  on  both  sides,  gave  a  sudden 
and  unanimous,  though  inaudible,  groan,  shed  a  sim 
ultaneous,  though  invisible,  tear,  and  waved  a  con 
certed  and  final,  though  imperceptible,  farewell. 

This  was  cruel,  but  it  was  inevitable ;  for  it  was 
the  immemorial  law  and  custom  of  that  region  and 
realm  that  whensoever  any  one,  Princess  or  dame 
of  low  degree,  old  or  young,  became  a  housekeeper, 
all  the  good  fairies  who  had  been  in  active  service 
on  her  behalf,  no  matter  for  how  long  a  time,  or 
with  what  good  intentions  and  results,  were  imme 
diately  put  upon  the  retired  list,  and  a  certain 


6  DO  ME  STIC  US. 

malevolent  spirit  of  the  air  and  minister  of  chaos 
superseded  them,  and  took  entire  charge  and  com 
mand,  in  their  place  and  stead.  Now  this  malignant 
genius  was  named  DOMESTICUS. 

And  it  was  on  this  wise  with  Domesticus.  When 
any  lady  of  the  land,  little  or  large,  went  to  house 
keeping,  he  must  be  summoned.  He  was  sure  to 
respond  to  the  call,  for  this  was  his  designated  and 
predestined  task  and  duty;  and,  as  he  loved  mischief 
more  than  he  hated  work,  he  was  always  at  hand, 
and  would  appear  on  command,  by  word  of  mouth, 
or  on  the  customary  ringing  of  a  bell.  But,  like 
Proteus  of  old,  from  whom,  it  may  be,  he  had 
descended,  he  had  a  million  different  shapes,  and 
there  was  no  one  so  wise  as  to  know,  beforehand, 
under  what  aspect  he  would  come,  of  what  race,  or 
age,  or  sex,  or  presence,  or  what  name  he  would 
use,  for  he  could  transform  himself,  at  will,  and  was 
a  wonderfully  ingenious  and  inventive  spirit,  and 
incomprehensible  withal. 

The  Little  Lady  had  often  heard  about  Domes 
ticus  and  his  doings,  but  she  had  never  feared  him, 
partly  because  courage,  and  not  fear,  was  natural  to 
her,  partly  because  she  had  never  bestowed  much 
thought  upon  him,  but  chiefly  because  she  was 
always  so  inclined  to  think  well  of  every  one  and 
everything  that  she  had  brought  herself  to  entertain 
a  good  opinion  even  of  this  wicked  sprite.  She  had 
been  told  many  things  concerning  him,  and  always 
to  his  disadvantage,  by  her  relatives,  lineal  and 
collateral.  She  knew  he  had  a  bad  name,  but,  to 


A  NAMELESS  PRINCESS.  j 

tell  the  truth,  that  bad  name  of  his  had  rather 
attracted  her  sympathies  toward  Domesticus.  She 
was  so  full  of  all  human  pity  and  tenderness  that 
her  heart  had,  somehow,  gone  out  to  him,  in  the 
vague  hope  that  whenever,  in  her  future  happy  life, 
she  should  come  into  closer  contact  with  him,  she 
might  be  able  to  do  something  to  reclaim  him  and 
make  him  as  good  and  lovely  as  she  was  herself, 
and  as  she  wanted  all  the  world  to  be.  If  she  should 
ever  have  a  palace  of  her  own,  she  wanted  it  to  be 
a  bower  of  bliss,  wherein  even  Domesticus  himself 
would  be  subdued  to  the  spirit  of  the  place,  and 
become  docile  and  dutiful,  out  of  sheer  sympathy. 
If  he  should  come  to  her  in  manly  form,  he  would 
thus,  although  a  servitor,  be  invested  with  a  knightly 
sense  of  loyalty  and  chivalry ;  and  if  he  should  be 
represented  by  one  of  her  own  sex,  she  would  grow 
to  be  as  graceful  and  neat  handed  as  Hebe.  All 
this,  and  more,  in  a  gush  of  girlish  feeling,  she  had 
once  confided  to  a  grim-visaged  aunt,  at  whose  palace 
she  chanced  to  be  a  guest,  and  who,  being  of  mature 
age,  and,  at  the  time,  under  a  special  infliction  and 
visitation  of  Domesticus,  tartly  told  her  that  she 
was  a  green  girl  and  knew  no  more  about  this  arch 
enemy  than  the  babe  unborn. 

But  now  she  has  ceased  to  be  a  green  girl,  and 
she  is  in  her  own  house  and  home,  with  the  will  and 
the  way  to  work  out  to  their  fulfillment  all  these 
bright  and  beneficent  designs  and,  on  the  morrow, 
her  gentle  hand  shall  be  laid  on  the  monster's  neck 
and  leviathan  shall  be  tamed. 


CHAPTER  II. 

FIRST   DAY   WITH    DOMESTICUS. 

THE  sun  rose,  on  the  following  morning,  in  a 
cloudless  sky,  over  the  Imperial  City.  Its 
shrines  and  temples,  its  Forum  and  its  many  pal 
aces,  threw  back,  from  pediment  and  tower  and 
clustered  roofs,  the  bright  early  beams,  as  they  fell 
upon  the  great  wedge-shaped  city,  lying  between 
two  noble  rivers  whose  confluence  formed  a  spa 
cious  harbor  where  the  ships  of  many  nations  came 
and  went;  for  the  Imperial  citizens  were  traders 
with  all  the  world.  And  yet,  strange  to  say,  in 
their  perverseness,  while  they  scooped  out  and 
fashioned  deep  basins  and  slips  on  the  sides  of  both 
rivers,  wherein  the  myriad  vessels  of  all  countries 
could  float  and  have  safe  shelter  and  mooring,  they 
dumped  the  soil  and  dredgings  from  these  same 
basins  and  slips  into  the  waters  of  the  narrow  and 
sinuous  channels,  leading  from  the  harbor  to  the 
deep  sea,  so  as  to  block  and  hinder  the  access  and 
egress  of  the  very  commerce  for  which  they  pro 
vided  at  such  pains.  This  was  of  a  piece  with  all 
their  municipal  methods,  and  may  serve  to  show 
what  little  progress  they  had  made  in  the  great 
science  of  local  government,  which,  nearer  home, 
8 


FIKST  DA  Y  WITH  DOMESTICUS.  g 

we  have  brought  to  such  rare  perfection.  But, 
aside  from  a  continuing  and  chronic  mal-adminis- 
tration,  it  was  a  fair  and  prosperous  metropolis, 
wherein  the  ineradicable  civic  indifference  to  the  pub 
lic  weal  was  counterpoised  by  a  ceaseless  eagerness 
and  skill  in  private  enterprise;  and  so  it  grew  in 
wealth  and  power,  with  steady  growth.  Nor  was 
there,  in  the  wide  world,  a  city  where  hands  and 
hearts  were  more  readily  opened  to  the  cry  of  want 
or  suffering,  or  quicker  to  aid  in  all  good  works 
for  human  kind. 

The  palace  of  our  Prince  was  within  the  selected 
limits  set  apart,  by  common  consent  of  the  citizens, 
to  patrician  dwellings,  and  consecrated  to  an  all- 
powerful  divinity,  Societas  by  name,  whose  votaries 
were  numerous,  and  whose  priestesses  were  versed 
in  many  mysteries  and  held  sway  over  all  who 
dwelt  or  came  within  the  charmed  circle  of  their 
influence.  Like  all  the  houses  of  its  class,  in  the 
pre-^Esthetic  period  of  Magna  Patria,  it  was  a  mar 
vel  of  exterior  clumsiness  and  of  interior  unfitness. 
Many  sestertia  of  the  lawful  money  of  the  realm 
had  gone  from  the  Prince's  purse  into  bulky,  out 
side  stone  work,  hideous  to  the  eye,  and  into  mon 
strous  products  of  the  deforming  arts  of  plasterers, 
upholsterers,  and  decorators,  equally  abhorrent, 
within  doors,  and  many  more  into  a  net-work  of 
leaden  conduits  by  which,  under  false  pretences 
of  cleanliness  and  comfort,  poisoned  air  and  death- 
dealing  gases  were  made  to  permeate  every  nook 
and  corner  of  the  mansion. 


I0  DOMEST1CUS. 

But,  according  to  their  light,  and  after  their  blun 
dering  fashion,  the  patricians  of  the  Imperial  City 
made  for  themselves  elegant  and  luxurious  habita 
tions,  whose  appliances  for  warmth,  and  light,  and 
convenience,  in  many  ways,  were  far  superior  to 
those  existing,  at  the  time,  in  the  best  dwelling- 
houses  of  Mater  Patria,  the  main  source  from  which 
the  Imperial  citizens  derived  their  ideas  of  home 
with  all  its  traditional  environment  of  good  things. 

To  the  Little  Lady,  the  palace  was  a  supreme 
satisfaction  and,  aided  by  the  sense  of  security  and 
rest  with  which  it  seemed  to  be  pervaded  on  the 
night  of  her  arrival,  her  slumbers  were  undisturbed 
and  long  protracted.  The  Prince  was  early  astir 
and  abroad,  leaving  the  palace  without  waiting  for 
his  morning  meal,  which  he  expected  to  take  in 
that  quarter  of  the  Imperial  City  in  which  his 
principality  lay.  The  Princess,  considerately  left  to 
her  repose,  did  not  rise  until  the  day  was  well 
advanced  and  the  bustle  on  the  broad  Avenue,  on 
which  she  looked  out  from  her  windows,  seemed  to 
rebuke  her  for  having  slept  so  long.  Her  happy 
thoughts  immediately  took  up  again  the  golden 
thread  they  had  dropped  as  she  had  fallen  asleep. 
She  was  now,  more  than  ever,  the  mistress  of  the 
mansion  and  of  the  model  home  to  be  created 
within  its  walls.  She  knew  that  the  service  of  the 
previous  evening  had  been  improvised  for  the  occa 
sion,  according  to  the  directions  of  the  Prince,  who, 
in  his  wisdom,  had  confided  the  arrangements  to  a 
junior  of  his  house,  versed  in  the  arts  and  mysteries 


FIRST  DA  Y  WITH  DOMESTICUS.  \  \ 

of  Dry  Goods,  and  specially  familiar,  as  one  of  the 
ancient  and  worshipful  guild  of  Salesmen,  with  all 
manner  of  festive  rites.  He  had  easily  contrived 
the  entertainment  and  loaded  the  Prince's  board 
with  good  cheer,  providing,  among  other  choice 
exotics,  the  skilled  attendants  who  vanished  when 
their  work  was  done,  leaving  the  palace,  swept 
from  the  crumbs  of  the  supper  and  garnished  with 
the  flowers  of  the  table,  ready  for  the  coming  of 
Domesticus. 

The  fore-thought  of  the  Prince  had  looked  beyond 
the  evening  repast  and  made  some  provision  for  the 
immediate  wants  of  his  household.  Through  the 
same  friendly  intervention,  Domesticus  had  been 
summoned,  and  the  Princess  was  shown  a  trig  and 
twinkling-eyed  damsel,  flitting  about  the  palace,  in 
the  guise  of  a  housemaid  who,  as  it  seemed  to  her, 
might  be  the  ideal  Hebe  of  her  fancy,  and  she  was 
also  told  that  there  was  a  perfect  Treasure  below 
stairs.  To  this  extent  had  the  prudent  Prince 
undertaken  to  settle  the  preliminaries  of  what  he 
hoped  might  be  a  lasting  peace  with  Domesticus, 
little  knowing  the  crafty  adversary  with  whom  he 
had  to  deal. 

The  Princess,  after  getting  wide  awake  and  nearly 
dressed,  was  somewhat  puzzled  to  conjecture  what 
had  become  of  the  neat-handed  Hebe  on  this  bright 
morning,  and  why  she  was  not  at  her  door,  betimes, 
with  proffers  of  aid  and  service  meet  for  the  toilette 
of  a  lady  of  her  high  degree.  But  she  came  not, 
nor  was  the  sound  of  dust  pan,  hand  brush  or 


I2  DOMESTICUS. 

broom  to  be  heard  in  the  halls  or  on  the  staircase, 
nor  was  she  to  be  seen,  when  the  Little  Lady,  inquis 
itively  and  somewhat  furtively,  took  an  observation 
with  her  door  ajar.  Then  she  bethought  her  that 
Hebe  was  doubtless  busied  in  arranging  a  dainty 
repast  for  her  mistress — a  satisfactory  solution,  not 
that  the  Little  Lady,  any  more  than  any  other  well- 
conditioned  Princess,  cared,  in  the  least,  what  she 
had  to  eat  or  drink  in  the  morning,  or  at  noon,  or 
night,  but  because,  in  her  new  relation  to  it,  as  the 
head  of  the  house,  breakfast  began  to  appear  to  her 
in  the  light  of  an  Institution.  It  would  be  neces 
sarily  incomplete  on  this  first  morning,  as  the  Prince 
was  absent,  and  the  great  chest  of  silver  had,  ever 
since  the  wedding  day,  lain  undisturbed  in  the  vaults 
of  Aurum  &  Argentum,  the  great  conjurers  who 
could  transmute  anybody's  and  everybody's  gold 
and  silver  into  tea  sets,  dinner  sets,  jewelry  and  all  the 
other  necessaries  of  life,  and  then  keep  them  safe  and 
sound,  at  moderate  rates  of  storage.  Only  a  special 
and  unique  service  of  small,  antique  silver,  a  few  rare 
and  costly  pieces,  had  the  Prince  brought  home  with 
him  from  the  Old  World  ;  these  had  been  exhibited 
and  admired  during  the  evening,  and  left  in  the 
unlocked  drawer  of  the  onyx-topped  buffet,  the 
Princess  taking  no  thought  of  the  fact  that,  from 
time  immemorial,  it  had  been  the  invariable  custom 
and  duty  of  every  good  housekeeper  to  cradle  such 
treasures  in  a  basket,  and  take  them  as  nearly  to  bed 
with  her  as  circumstances  would  permit. 

When  the  Princess  had  ended  her  toilette,  and 


FIRST  DA  Y  WITH  DOMESTICUS.  j  3 

taken  a  final  look  at  herself  in  the  glass,  she  went 
down  stairs.  The  house  was  dark,  in  spite  of  the 
brilliancy  of  the  outer  day,  and  an  ominous  chill 
struck  through  her  as  she  entered  the  room  she  had 
last  quitted  the  night  before,  and  found  it  still 
unopened.  No  ray  of  enlivening  sunshine  greeted 
her  at  the  threshold  of  the  banqueting  hall,  but  only 
light  enough  to  disclose,  at  a  glance,  that  no  dainty 
repast,  nor  any  visible  sign  of  its  preparation,  was 
in  view.  The  room  was  still,  and  cold,  and  vacant, 
but  the  quick  eye  of  the  Princess,  taking  in  every 
thing  on  the  instant,  perceived  that  the  upper 
drawer  of  the  buffet  in  which  had  been  deposited, 
over  night,  the  Prince's  precious  pieces  of  small 
silver,  was  open.  A  swift,  prophetic  pang  shot 
through  her  soul ;  she  rushed  to  the  drawer  and 
the  truth  flashed  upon  her.  Hebe,  the  neat  handed 
but  light  fingered,  had  fled,  and,  with  her,  all  the 
small  silver,  every  ounce,  every  pennyweight,  every 
grain. 

This  was  the  first  sword  thrust  of  Domesticus. 
If  it  did  not  pierce  the  Little  Lady's  heart,  it  was 
only  because  he  never  despatched  his  victims  at 
once,  but  loved  to  keep  them  at  his  cruel  mercy. 
The  Princess  did  not  sink,  nor  scream,  nor  swoon. 
She  simply  stood  aghast.  But,  even  in  her  surprise 
and  horror,  she  cast  no  railing  accusation  against 
Domesticus,  or  his  emissary,  the  fugitive  Hebe; 
but  only  heaped  reproach  upon  her  own  sweet  self, 
putting  no  blame  on  the  Prince,  or  on  the  junior 
prince,  who  had  brought  this  serpent  into  her  Eden. 


!4  DO  ME  STIC  US. 

"  It  is  all  my  fault,  my  fault,"  she  said,  "  I  ought 
to  have  taken  it  up  stairs  when  I  went  to  bed." 

Then,  as  the  question  came  home  to  her,  "  What 
am  I  to  do  ?  "  her  thought  reverted  to  the  Treasure 
below  as  her  sole  immediate  refuge  and  succor.  The 
bell  was  close  at  hand,  and  she  rang  it  with  a  quick, 
convulsive  jerk,  which  set  in  motion  a  distant,  half 
smothered,  discordant  tingle,  which  seemed  like  the 
suppressed,  mocking  laughter  of  some  concealed 
demon.  She  well  knew  that  the  bell  was  the  sum 
mons  of  Domesticus,  but  if  he  were  represented,  in 
those  subterranean  precincts  of  the  palace,  by  a 
Treasure,  there  was  nothing  to  dreacl,  and  if  the 
Treasure  would  not  come  to  the  Princess,  the 
Princess  must  go  to  the  Treasure.  And  this,  after 
long,  unanswered  ringings  of  the  bell,  she  deter 
mined  to  do,  much  wondering  what  might  next  be 
fall  her  in  her  new  domain. 

She  descended  to  the  lower  floor,  and  as  the 
door  \vhich  admitted  her  into  this  unexplored  ter 
ritory  closed  behind  her,  found  herself  in  deeper 
darkness  than  before.  A  glimmer  of  light  showed 
what  she  divined  must  be  the  penetralia  of  the 
Treasure,  because  in  one  corner  she  descried  the 
outline  of  the  tall  cylindrical  boiler,  lifted,  like  a 
huge  foreboding  finger,  to  warn  her  off.  But  she 
took  no  heed  and  pressed  on,  not  looking  down 
ward,  and  so,  not  seeing  the  obstruction  which 
blocked  her  way,  a  mass  of  matter  in  human  shape, 
against  which  she  stumbled  and  across  which  she 
fell,  her  fair  forehead  striking  the  hard  floor,  on 


FIRST  DA  Y  WITH  DOMESTICUS.  i  5 

which  she  lay  stunned  and  unconscious.  The  Little 
Lady  had  tumbled  over  the  Treasure ;  the  unpleasant 
tale  of  whose  temptation  and  fall  an  empty  flagon,  in 
close  proximity  to  her  prostrate  form,  too  plainly  told. 
Of  the  subsequent  events  of  that  eventful  morning, 
the  Little  Lady  could  never  give  a  satisfactory  ex 
planation  to  herself,  or  to  any  one  else.  She  has  a 
vague  recollection  of  a  return  to  consciousness,  and 
of  seeing,  in  shadowy  outline,  the  uniformed  and 
helmeted  figure  of  a  Curator  of  the  public  peace, 
who,  having  kept  special  watch  and  ward  over  the 
palace,  during  the  absence  of  the  Prince,  was  sur 
prised,  on  the  morning  after  his  return,  to  find  the 
iron  door,  which  led  into  its  lower  regions,  wide 
open,  as  it  had  been  swung  back  by  the  departing 
Hebe,  the  order  of  whose  going  had  not  stood  upon 
leaving  closed  doors  behind  her.  Accordingly,  in 
the  due  discharge  of  his  duty,  the  Curator  entered, 
to  survey  the  premises,  at  the  opportune  moment  of 
the  catastrophe  I  have  just  described.  Deserted  as 
she  was  by  all  the  good  fairies,  and  sore  beset  as 
she  was  by  Domesticus,  it  seemed  a  wonderful  piece 
of  good  fortune  that  such  aid  and  comfort  should 
have  come  to  the  Little  Lady  in  her  extremity,  but 
she  is  firmly  persuaded  that  this  was  the  manner  of 
her  deliverance,  and  she  never  looked,  thereafter,  at 
one  of  the  big-buttoned  corps  to  which  her  deliverer 
belonged,  without  a  thrill  of  gratitude.  It  was  he 
who  conveyed  the  Princess,  up  the  stairs,  to  the 
nearest  lounge,  and  who  conveyed  the  Treasure, 
down  the  street,  to  the  nearest  lock-up. 


jg  DO  ME  STIC  US. 

A  bevy'  of  the  Little  Lady's  friends  of  her  own 
sex  and  age  happened  to  come  tripping  along, 
shortly  afterwards,  to  tender  their  congratulations 
on  her  safe  return  and  to  inspect  her  new  home,  and 
although  their  congratulations  were  congealed  into 
condolence,  they  were  very  helpful  to  her  in  her 
sore  distress.  They  sat  about  her,  bathing  her 
bruised  brow,  administering  all  the  restoratives 
within  reach,  and,  like  the  chorus  of  a  Greek  play, 
making  the  air  resound  with  alternate  bursts  of 
sympathy  for  the  Little  Lady  and  maledictions 
against  Domesticus.  Each  one  had  her  special 
recital  of  his  misdeeds,  recent  and  remote,  a  dark 
catalogue  of  unwritten  and  unpunishable  crimes, 
against  which  there  was  no  relief  and  no  redress, 
and  which  were  rilling  the  bosoms  of  families  with 
gloom  and  despair.  So  the  lovely  choristers  sur 
rounded  the  Princess,  thrusting  out  their  tiny,  high- 
heeled  boots,  waving  their  snow-white,  bangled 
arms,  shaking  their  jeweled  fists,  and  almost  shriek 
ing,  as  they  recounted  these  unnumbered  woes. 

The  fair  visitants  did  not  confine  themselves  to 
the  chorus  ;  they  gave  all  heed  to  ministering  to  the 
wants  of  the  victim  of  Domesticus,  and  to  that  end, 
went  through  all  the  doors,  drawers  and  cupboards, 
up  stairs  and  down  stairs,  as  if  they  had  been  armed 
with  search-warrants,  and  foraged  throughout  the 
premises  for  whatever  might  be  serviceable  in  the 
emergency.  Nothing  came  of  it  all,  except  a  single 
cup  of  tea,  which  they  served  with  a  vast  amount 
of  laughing,  and  chattering,  and  merriment,  at  finding 


FIRST  DA  Y  U'lTII  HOMESTICUS.  ly 

themselves  in  a  palace  actually,  for  the  time  being, 
deserted  by  Domesticus.  It  was,  in  reality,  a  pil 
laged  outpost,  which  had  been  stormed,  and  sacked, 
and  then  left  behind  by  the  invader,  but  to  the 
young  ladies,  it  seemed  only  like  a  great  house 
having  a  holiday,  and  enjoying  it  in  silence.  So 
they  rummaged  about,  without  let  or  hindrance.  If 
there  had  been  a  skeleton  in  any  closet,  it  would 
have  been  brought  to  light,  but  the  closets  were 
bare,  as  the  Little  Lady's  boxes  had  not  been 
unpacked,  and  as  she  ruefully  said,  she  had  nothing 
to  show  her  friends  except  her  own  damaged  face. 


CHAPTER  III. 

A   NEW    DEPARTURE. 

IV  i EANWHILE,  not  Rumor  with  her  hundred 
IVI  tongues,  but  the  faithful  Curator  with  his  sin 
gle  brogue,  had  brought  to  the  Prince  the  tidings 
of  the  disaster.  He  lost  no  time  in  setting  in 
motion  so  much  of  the  detective  enginery  of  the 
law  as  lay  within  his  reach,  for  the  pursuit  and 
apprehension  of  the  fugitive  and  spoliating  Hebe  ; 
and  then  hurried  homeward,  with  the  help  of  such 
substitutes  for  seven-league  boots  as  the  prosaic 
character  of  the  times  on  which  he  had  fallen  would 
permit.  On  his  way,  he  bethought  him  that  the 
Princess,  in  her  helpless  condition,  would  be 
wholly  without  the  means  of  carrying  on  the  affairs 
of  the  household,  and  the  prospect  of  possible 
starvation  not  being  a  pleasant  one,  he  determined 
to  go,  at  once,  to  a  neighboring  and  friendly  sor 
cerer,  supposed  to  be  on  the  most  familiar  terms 
with  Domesticus,  as  one  of  a  guild  by  whose 
agency,  to  a  large  extent,  his  countless  emissaries 
were  quartered  on  the  inhabitants  of  the  Imperial 
City. 

This  sorcerer,  in  common  with  all  of  his  fratern 
ity  who  possessed  and  plied  the  same  magical  arts, 
18 


A  NEW  DEPARTURE.  XQ 

was  able  to  command,  at  will,  the  presence  of  the 
varied  shapes  in  which  Domesticus  appeared  for 
every  variety  of  service.  Like  the  slaves  of  the 
lamp  in  the  Arabian  Nights,  they  came,  when 
summoned,  at  the  bidding  of  their  superiors,  whose 
dens  were  easy  of  access,  so  that  any  and  all 
householders,  driven  to  seek  the  aid  of  Domesti 
cus,  were  free  to  come  and  try  their  fortune  with 
the  help  of  the  sorcerer,  who  by  his  art  could  call 
these  visible  spirits  from  contiguous  deeps,  not  vast, 
but,  usually,  quite  circumscribed,  redolent  with 
divers  odors,  and  confused  with  the  noise  of  many 
tongues. 

These  sorcerers,  as  a  spell  to  conjure  with,  con 
trived  to  press  into  their  service  that  honest  poly 
syllabic  word  "  Intelligentia" ;  they  painted  it,  in 
large  characters,  over  all  their  lintels  as  if  they  were, 
in  some  sort,  the  specially  accredited  dispensers  and 
custodians  of  intelligence,  whereas  the  commodities 
in  which  they  dealt  were  often  at  the  farthest  remove 
from  any  such  faculty,  but  this  was  only  another 
of  the  many  strange  devices  of  Domesticus.  So 
our  Prince  thought  himself  well  served,  when  after 
divers  incantations,  the  sorcerer  caused  a  succession 
of  shapes  to  pass  before  him,  from  which  he  made 
careful  selection,  and  was  assured  that  they  would 
re-appear  at  his  summons,  within  his  palace,  and 
do  his  bidding  and  that  of  the  Princess,  in  all  things, 
and  strange  to  say,  the  Prince,  with  all  his  wisdom, 
went  his  way  firmly  believing  these  promises  would 
be  fulfilled ;  such  was  the  glamour  which  Domes- 


2Q  DOMESTICUS. 

ticus  and  his  cunning  allies,  the  sorcerers,  could 
cast  over  the  strongest  and  clearest  minds. 

But  when  the  Prince  came  to  his  Lady's  chamber, 
and  told  her  what  he  had  done  for  her  solace  and 
comfort,  she  refused  to  be  comforted.  Domesticus 
had  given  her  what  he  had  given  thousands  of  her 
patient,  suffering  sex  afore-time,  a  headache,  of  his 
own  peculiar  and  malevolent  invention,  which  made 
its  victims  turn  a  deaf  ear  and  a  sightless  eye  to 
every  word  or  sign  of  consolation.  So  the  Prince 
was  forced  to  sit  solitary  at  his  board,  while  the 
Princess  bemoaned  her  fate,  above  stairs,  and 
Domesticus  gloated,  in  secret,  over  the  misery  he 
had  wrought  in  the  first  calamity  this  loving  pair 
had  encountered." 

The  destructive  work  of  this  first  day,  complete 
as  it  may  seem,  was  only  a  harsh  prelude  and  dis 
cordant  overture  to  what  Domesticus  had  in  store 
for  the  Little  Lady.  He  well  knew  she  was  brave 
of  heart  and  stout  of  will,  and  not  to  be  crushed  at 
a  blow,  and  he  kept  in  reserve  many  a  heated 
plowshare,  over  which  he  meant  her  path  should  lie. 
And  brave  of  heart  and  stout  of  will  she  was, 
emerging  from  this  first,  fiery  ordeal  somewhat 
crest-fallen  and  chagrined,  but  not  bating  hope  or 
courage,  and  with  faith  soon  re-established  in  her 
future. 

Nor  was  she  one  whit  disheartened  by  the  flurry 
and  storm  which  followed  the  Prince's  venture  with 
the  sorcerer,  the  outcome  of  which  was  nothing 
but  dire  failure.  The  Prince  soon  came  to  see  that 


A  NEW  DEPAR TURE. 


21 


with  all  his  good  intention  and  amiable  action, 
excused,  if  not  justified,  by  the  emergency  of  the 
case,  he  had  really  been  playing  into  the  hands  of 
Domesticus,  who,  being  himself  an  arch  disorgan- 
izer,  was  never  so  well  pleased  as  when  the  house 
hold  order  was  subverted  by  such  irregular  pro 
ceedings  as  this  one  on  the  part  of  the  Prince.  He 
had,  in  his  supposed  wisdom,  but  real  folly,  rushed 
in  where  even  the  angels  of  well  conducted  homes 
feared  to  tread.  He  had  violated  the  cardinal  law 
by  which  the  peace  of  families  subsists.  He  had 
rashly  usurped  a  function  which  belonged  exclu 
sively  to  the  Princess.  Not  that  she,  sweet  soul, 
complained,  but  that  Domesticus  maliciously  made 
use  of  this  infraction  as  a  weapon  of  torture,  and 
instructed  the  new  comers  that  as  they  had  enlisted 
at  the  call  of  the  Prince  they  owed  no  allegiance  or 
duty  to  the  Princess,  and  accordingly,  so  soon  as 
she  assumed  command,  they  were  in  open  revolt. 
The  poor  Prince's  efforts  to  compel  subordination 
were  wholly  ineffectual,  and  his  carefully  selected 
and  picked  corps  deserted  and  decamped. 

The  reins  once  more  in  her  own  hands,  as  she 
fondly  hoped,  the  Princess  determined  to  make  a 
bold  push  to  assert  herself  and  her  supremacy. 
Then  it  was  that  in  her  own  right,  and  in  her  own 
behalf,  she  consulted  the  sorcerers  and  found,  to  her 
dismay,  that  while  they  were  on  the  alert  to  serve 
her,  the  spirits  whom  they  called  came  not  only  in 
questionable  but  most  questioning  shapes.  She, 
who  came  to  examine,  and  scrutinize,  and  select, 


22  DOMESTICUS. 

suddenly,  by  some  strange  witchery  and  transfor 
mation,  was  turned  into  an  object  of  suspicion,  to 
be  herself  cross-examined,  catechised,  weighed  in 
balances,  and,  too  often,  found  wanting.  How 
many  were  there  in  family?  Was  there  a  baby? 
Did  they  eat  by  courses  ?  How  early  did  they  get 
up?  How  late  did  they  go  to  bed?  Would  there 
be  somebody  else  to  do  everybody's  work  ?  She 
was  made  to  feel  like  a  culprit  before  a  committing 
magistrate,  without  a  culprit's  privilege  of  waiving 
an  examination,  or  declining  to  criminate  herself, 
and  she  was  glad  to  escape  from  the  grasp  of  her 
inquisitors,  with  a  mingled  sense  of  humiliation  and 
defeat. 

Then  it  was  that  her  wants  were,  according  to  the 
custom  of  the  place,  heralded  on  all  the  columns,  set 
up  for  this  purpose,  in  the  Imperial  City.  Then  it  was 
she  discovered  that  Domesticus  had  so  sapped  and 
subverted  the  foundations  of  morality,  that  mankind 
in  general,  and  womankind  in  particular,  claimed  to 
be  absolved  from  every  obligation  of  truth  or  veracity 
in  certifying  as  to  his  representatives.  He  seemed 
to  have  granted  a  kind  of  dispensation  in  the  use 
of  the  vernacular,  whereby  such  old  time  terms  as 
"sobriety,"  "honesty,"  "industry,"  "fidelity,"  and 
the  like,  were  no  longer  real  names  for  real  qualities, 
but  were  reduced  to  the  level  of  mere  trademarks, 
labels,  and  brands,  for  the  wares  of  Domesticus,  who 
so  juggled  and  contrived  with  these  and  other 
devices,  as  to  delude  a  confiding  public  into  the 
notion  that  all  the  virtues  could  be  hired  at  a  fixed 


A  NEW  DEPAR  TURE.  2  3 

rate  per  month — a  draft  on  popular  credulity  which 
would  have  been  dishonored  at  sight  in  any  other 
sphere  of  sublunary  affairs. 

Then,  moreover,  it  was  that  the  Little  Lady  kept 
on  courageously  ringing  her  bell,  and  Domesticus 
kept  making  his  appearance,  in  all  the  wonderful, 
inexhaustible  variety  of  his  forms.  Sometimes  he 
would  come  in  what  seemed  to  be  personified  slow 
ness,  and  then  everything  was  irretrievably  behind 
time,  whereat  the  Prince  was  greatly  exercised, 
because  Punctuality  was  a  prime  virtue  of  Dry 
Goods,  and  Domesticus,  with  his  ally  Procrastina 
tion,  the  thief  of  Time,  made  a  pair  better  fitted  for 
a  Penitentiary  than  a  Palace.  Then  he  would  appear 
in  a  tearing,  slashing  shape,  so  that  the  Prince  and 
Princess  were  whirled  along  the  courses  of  a  meal, 
as  though  they  were  eating  for  a  wager  depending 
on  the  speed  of  the  performance.  The  next  incum 
bent  would  be  of  a  pattern  so  small  that  the  evening 
lamps  could  not  be  lighted  without  the  aid  of  chairs, 
or  the  tall  windows  locked  without  step-ladders ;  to 
be  replaced,  anon,  by  some  stalwart  figure,  march 
ing  and  countermarching  as  if  trained  in  the  ranks 
of  Penthesile,  Queen  of  the  Amazons.  One  day, 
it  would  be  stupidity,  in  densest  form,  under  whose 
confusing  misdirection,  Princes,  and  Princesses,  and 
other  notables,  would  be  left  standing  in  the  ves 
tibule,  while  vagrants,  in  disguise,  were  ceremoni 
ously  ushered  into  the  inner  precincts,  whence  they 
could  slyly  retire  with  any  chance  souvenir  avail 
able  to  their  thievish  touch.  The  next  incumbent 


24  DOMESTICUS. 

would  possess  a  rarely  endowed  intelligence,  coupled, 
perhaps,  with  an  undiscovered  and  undiscoverable 
mystery,  given  to  the  rehearsing  of  dramatic  or 
lyric  fragments  in  the  stilly  night,  in  close  proximity 
to  speaking  tubes  or  furnace  flues,  quite  too  high 
strung  and  high  toned  for  daily  service.  But  how 
often  did  Domesticus  delight  in  tormenting  and 
tantalizing  the  Little  Lady  with  some  well  seeming 
maiden  form,  fair  to  see,  full  of  sweetest  promise, 
and  shortest  lived  performance,  making  the  house 
hold  work,  for  the  time,  a  delightsome  thing  and  a 
forecast  of  permanent  peace,  but,  presently,  loving 
the  youthful  green-grocer,  or  the  stalwart  butcher, 
not  wisely  but  too  well,  and  thereupon  becoming  as 
limp  as  one  of  her  own  dish-cloths,  and  losing  all 
working  or  waking  sense  in  Love's  young  dream. 
For  such  an  one  the  daily  round  of  duty  would 
soon  give  way  to  picnics,  predestined  invariably  to 
take  place  in  bedraggling  thunder-squalls,  or  to 
midnight  entertainments,  requiring  a  fortnight  to 
prepare  for  them,  and  three  weeks  to  recover  from 
them  all,  ending,  too  often,  in  the  final  exchange  of 
the  certain  and  safe  shelter  and  comfort  of  a  well- 
ordered  home  for  a  blank  in  the  lottery  of  a  chance 
marriage. 

Yes,  Domesticus  was  not  only,  as  I  have  already 
said,  like  Proteus  with  his  myriad  shapes ;  he  was 
like  Argus  with  his  hundred  eyes,  or  Briareus  with 
his  hundred  hands,  or  the  Hydra  with  his  many 
heads.  In  fact,  he  was  worse  than  these  old  offend 
ers,  because,  while  they,  severally  and  respectively, 


A  NE  W  DEPA  R  TURE.  2  5 

belonged  to  some  specific  nation  or  place,  and  had 
a  well  defined  pedigree  of  their  own,  Domesticus 
could  assume  any  nationality  at  pleasure,  and  change, 
as  he  saw  fit,  his  name,  his  country,  or  his  skin,  as 
well  as  his  spots,  which  he  was  always  changing, 
for  he  no  sooner  got  comfortably  into  one  than  he 
was  uncomfortably  on  the  outlook  for  another. 

He  was  an  arch  cosmopolitan.  His  drag  net  was 
thrown  over  every  nook  and  corner  of  the  globe;  it 
seemed  to  the  Princess  as  if  her  premises  were  a 
sort  of  rendezvous  for  all  its  races.  Now,  it  was 
Domesticus  Anglicanus,  who  had  stood,  in  state, 
behind  Dukes  and  Earls,  and  had  come,  at  last,  to 
assert  his  supremacy  as  a  sovereign,  among  his 
fellow  sovereigns  of  Magna  Patria.  Now,  it  was 
Domesticus  Gallicus,  whose  cordon-blcu  was  the 
unfailing  symbol  of  revolution  and  anarchy,  below 
stairs.  Then,  it  was  Domesticus  Scotus,  as  obsti 
nately  resolute  to  upset  all  pre-existing  order  at  a 
single  blow,  as  was  Jenny  Geddes  to  topple  over  the 
Papacy  with  a  toss  of  her  wooden  stool.  Again,  it 
was  Domesticus  Germanicus,  whose  coming  and 
going  were  like  blasts  from  the  forests  of  Norse- 
land,  and  the  hidden  things  of  whose  culinary  com 
pounds  no  one  could  discover  or  digest.  But 
chiefly,  and  at  all  times,  it  was  Domesticus  Hiber- 
nicus,  the  most  constant  and  the  most  centrifugal  of 
all  the  forces  that  Labor  ever  contrived  for  the  service 
and  discipline  of  mankind,  and  let  loose  upon  un 
suspecting  householders,  with  its  conservation  of 
destructive  energy ;  its  readiness  to  make  or  mar ; 


25  DOMESTICUS. 

its  possibilities  of  chance  success  and  its  illimitable 
incapacity,  alike  unendurable  and  indispensable ; 
the  two-edged,  unsheathed  sword  of  the  adversary, 
always  sharpened  with  ready  wit  and  pointed  for 
instant  action,  and  poised  for  cut  or  thrust — at  once 
a  social  defence  and  a  social  terror. 

What  the  Little  Lady  did,  and  what  she  suffered 
during  this  period  of  her  warfare  with  Domesticus, 
cannot  be  recounted  in  detail.  What  wars  of  contend 
ing  races  were  waged  with  her  cutlery,  and  what 
fires  of  persecution  were  kindled  with  her  coal,  it 
would  take  too  long  to  tell.  The  wrath  roused  into 
action  between  the  contending  votaries  of  rival 
shrines  and  opposing  altars  was  unextinguishable, 
and  the  Little  Lady  came,  at  last,  to  think  that  Do 
mesticus  could  make  an  auto  da  fe  or  a  love  feast 
minister  equally  to  his  malignant  purposes,  and  that 
he  could  transform  Religion  herself  into  a  Fury. 
Heretics  who  abjured  the  Pontifex  Maximus  and 
denounced  him  and  his  works  were  driven  out,  at 
the  point  of  the  boning  knife  and  the  larding  pin, 
while  they,  in  turn,  pommelled  his  devout  adherents 
with  gridiron  and  saucepan,  until  the  Little  Lady  in 
despair,  like  Gallic,  drove  the  contending  zealots 
from  her  jurisdiction,  and  was  sorely  tempted  to 
supplement  her  next  declaration  of  wants  with  the 
startling  suffix — "  Atheists  preferred  !  " 

Thus  everything  went  wrong ;  her  pillow  was  wet 
with  many  tears  during  the  long  vigils  of  the  night, 
and  her  heart  strings  were  stretched,  by  day,  to 
their  utmost  tension.  But  they  never  broke.  Some- 


DEPARTURE.  37 

times,  there  were  gleams  of  hope  and  a  vista  of 
prospective  peace,  but  only  at  brief  intervals  and 
for  short  periods  of  time.  Of  course,  her  one  great, 
animating  idea  was  to  please  the  Prince,  who  was 
nothing  if  not  hospitable,  and  who  loved  to  see  the 
Princess  in  her  grace  and  beauty,  presiding  over  a 
well-spread  board,  surrounded  by  congenial  spirits. 
With  all  his  wisdom,  he  could  never  be  quite 
brought  to  comprehend  why  anything  and  every 
thing  which  pleased  his  appetite,  and  ministered  to 
his  satisfaction,  in  other  places  or  palaces,  could  not 
be  made  immediately,  and  permanently,  available 
under  his  own  roof.  This  was  one  of  the  many  deep 
and  subtile  contrivances  of  Domesticus.  Nothing 
was  more  to  his  depraved  taste  than  to  plant  the 
germs  of  dissatisfaction  in  the  sacred  soil  of  home, 
by  pointing  sharp  contrasts  between  its  necessary 
limitations  and  the  large  possibilities  beyond  it. 
The  Prince,  for  whose  daily  noontide  refreshment, 
or  occasional  evening  social  delectation,  when  else 
where  than  in  his  palace,  there  was  the  ready  service 
of  hands  skilled  to  minister  to  every  variety  of  taste, 
and  proficient  in  the  arts  they  exercised,  was  too 
apt  to  fancy  that  a  like  degree  of  perfection  was 
an  easy  thing  to  attain  within  his  own  domicile. 

Or,  perchance,  he  would  sit,  a  serenely  satisfied, 
but  wholly  irresponsible  guest,  at  some  symposium, 
contrived  at  special  pains  and  outlay,  and  bring 
home  minute  reminiscences  of  its  completeness  and 
perfection,  every  one  of  which  would  send  a  pang 
through  the  bosom  of  the  Princess.  She  strove 

O 


23  DOMESTICUS. 

and  struggled  and  endured ;  she  braced  herself  for 
every  fresh  encounter  with  Domesticus ;  she  sat 
through  tedious  hours  of  entertainment,  with  the 
heroism,  if  not  the  serenity,  of  a  martyr  at  the  stake, 
silent  and  uncomplaining,  dreading  disaster  with 
every  dish,  from  the  opening  demi-valve  to  the 
closing  demi-tasse  ;  apprehensive,  from  the  moment 
she  missed  the  salt  in  the  soup  to  the  moment 
when  she  found  it  in  the  ice  cream ;  conscious  of 
every  blunder ;  self-condemning  at  every  slip ;  and 
only  too  glad  to  fly,  at  the  earliest  moment  of 
escape,  from  what  seemed  a  throne  of  queenly 
state,  but  was,  in  reality,  a  rack  of  torture. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE    PRINCESS    PUGNAX. 

T7  VERY  intelligent  reader  who  has  followed  thus 
C/  far,  in  these  pages,  the  fortunes  and  misfortunes 
of  the  Little  Lady,  will  understand  that  she  was  by 
no  means  solitary  and  alone  in  her  state  of  suffer 
ing.  Of  this  she  herself  was  well  aware,  but  so 
staunch  was  her  courage  and  so  strong  her  will, 
that  for  a  long  time,  she  carried  on  the  unequal 
warfare,  single  handed,  seeking  no  succor,  but  like 
Ajax,  in  his  long,  midnight  combat,  only  praying 
for  light,  that  she  might  not  be  left  wholly  at  the 
mercy  of  her  foe,  who  was  at  home  in  the  darkness 
and  loved  it  better  than  the  light. 

After  a  series  of  successive  defeats,  culminating 
in  her  apparent  total  discomfiture,  as  she  sat  one 
day,  curled  up,  as  she  was  wont  to  describe  her 
position,  in  a  favorite  and  capacious  easy  chair  in 
her  own  quiet  solarium,  or  sunny  boudoir,  to  which 
she  often  resorted  for  meditation  and  repose,  and 
after  donning  her  invisible  thinking  cap,  and  revolv 
ing  in  her  mind  the  many  instances  of  her  weak 
ness  and  want  of  ability  to  cope  with  her  wily 
enemy,  she  came  to  feel  the  absolute  need  of  some 
friendly  help  and  counsel.  It  was  sad  to  be  forced 

29 


30  DOMESTICUS. 

to  the  conclusion  that  neither  love  nor  money 
would  avail  to  win  over  this  inveterate  foe,  or  to 
counteract  his  eyil  ways.  Of  love,  she  had  by  nature 
an  inexhaustible  supply,  and  of  money,  the  Prince 
was  lavish,  and  what  could  not  these  potent  forces 
effect?  What,  indeed,  except  the  conquest  of 
Domesticus  ?  Thus  musing,  she  formed  a  sudden 
resolve  which  was  promptly  executed.  A  few 
moments  of  preparation  sufficed,  and  with  the  light 
est  of  footsteps,  if  not  with  the  lightest  of  hearts, 
she  made  her  way  to  a  neighboring  palace,  where 
dwelt  an  ancient  and  venerable  housekeeper  whose 
sage  counsel  she  proposed  to  seek. 

The  name  of  this  wisest  of  women  was  the 
Princess  Pugnax.  She  was  a  veteran  dowager  of 
vast  experience,  within  doors  and  without  She 
had  a  reputation  among  housewives  which  could 
not  be  excelled,  if  indeed  it  could  be  equalled.  Her 
mahogany,  her  oil  cloths,  her  brasses,  her  silver, 
her  linen,  were  the  envy  of  her  contemporaries. 
They  were  quoted  in  social  circles,  as  government 
bonds  are  quoted  at  the  Stock  Exchange  and  in 
Bank  parlors.  You  could  eat  off  her  floors ;  the 
heaviest  finger  could  be  drawn  over  the  polished 
tops  of  her  mantels  or  tables  without  detecting  a 
particle  of  dust ;  her  pantries  and  presses  could  be 
opened  at  any  hour  of  the  day  or-  night,  without 
revealing  a  sign  of  disorder ;  her  furniture  looked 
as  if  it  were  on  a  perpetual  dress-parade.  It  was 
generally  believed  that  she  had  beaten  Domesticus 
on  his  own  ground.  The  current  and  accepted 


THE  PRINCESS  PUG N AX.  $l 

report  was  that  she  had  established  a  Reign  of  Terror 
in  her  precincts,  and  set  up  a  permanent  guillotine, 
as  the  only  effectual  method  of  dealing  with 
Domcsticus  and  his  representatives,  and  that  she 
had  achieved  a  signal  success.  It  was  said  that 
decapitations  were  as  common  with  her  as  dinners. 
Sometimes,  the  whole  force  would  be  dealt  with 
summarily,  by  a  preconcerted  coup  dctat,  and 
there  would  be  a  head  in  the  kitchen  sink ;  another 
in  the  butler's  tray;  a  third  in  the  laundry  tubs;  a 
fourth  in  the  sewing  basket;  a  fifth  in  the  house 
maid's  dustpan,  and  so  on,  according  to  the  various 
appliances  in  use  in  the  mansions  of  the  Imperial 
City,  of  which  those  I  have  specified  are  the  equiv 
alents  in  our  own  metropolis.  Domesticus,  with 
his  ready  resources  and  magic  art,  could,  it  is  true, 
always  contrive  to  rescue  his  votaries,  however 
mangled,  as  easily  as  Minerva  protected  her  prote 
ges  in  the  Homeric  wars,  spiriting  them  away,  put 
ting  the  missing  heads  on  the  right  shoulders,  or 
supplying  new  ones,  and  forming  out  of  these 
restored  victims  a  kind  of  old  guard  for  his  more 
perilous  enterprises.  Then  he  would  invade  the 
Pugnax  territory  with  fresh  levies,  who  would,  in 
turn,  be  routed  and  destroyed  by  the  relentless 
Princess,  whose  reputation  rose  with  each  suc 
cessive  slaughter,  until  she  ranked  as  a  Field-Mar 
shal  or  Generalissimo  among  surrounding  Prin 
cesses.  But  as  the  reserves  and  munitions  of  war 
of  Domesticus  were  inexhaustible,  the  faster  the 
gaps  in  his  ranks  were  made,  the  faster  they  were 


32  DOMESTICUS. 

filled,  and  as  it  was  in  his  savage  nature  to  feel  a 
kind  of  grim  satisfaction  in  the  misery  even  of  his 
own  followers,  he  took  a  double  delight  in  the  heavy 
load  he  laid  on  the  Princess,  and  the  burdens  she 
imposed  on  them.  In  truth,  he  was  well  satisfied 
to  let  her  have  an  apparent  supremacy,  well  know 
ing  it  was  only  titular,  and  that  she  was,  really,  as 
much  in  vassalage  to  him  as  was  Herod  the  Great 
to  the  Roman  Caesar.  So,  if  ever  there  was  a  vic- 
trix  victim  it  was  the  Princess  Pugnax.  Her  repu 
tation  had  to  be  maintained,  and  in  order  to  keep 
her  record  at  its  high  standard,  her  whole  life 
became  a  succession  of  campaigns  and  dearly 
bought  victories,  the  price  of  a  seeming  triumph 
over  the  wily  Domesticus  and  his  hobgoblin 
legions.  Meanwhile,  she  openly  and  persistently 
defied  him  and  maintained  a  brave  show  of  inde 
pendence,  and  due  respect  was  paid  her  accord 
ingly. 

In  the  case  of  the  Little  Lady,  this  respect 
amounted  almost  to  awe,  and  she  thought  herself 
very  bold  to  ask  help,  in  her  sore  straits,  from  this 
lofty  dame.  She  approached  her  as  an  oracle  and 
divulged  the  story  of  her  griefs,  in  an  ascending 
scale  of  intensity  which  reached  its  climax  with  the 
despairing  cry — "  What  am  I  to  do  with  Domes 
ticus?" 

The  chief  characteristic  of  the  Princess  Pugnax 
was  rigidity.  Her  form  was  rigid,  her  features  were 
rigid,  her  dress  was  rigid.  Nature  and  Time  had 
kept  her  so  submerged  in  the  indurating  waters  of 


T11K  /'AY.V( 7-:.S.V  PUGNAX.  33 

strife  that  she  seemed  to  have  suffered  a  gradual 
process  of  petri faction.  Her  glance  was  stony,  her 
voice  was  lui'-d,  ami  her  fingers  closed  on  the  Little 
Lady's  hand,  like  the  claw  of  an  extinct  animal. 
There  v.a^  no  spot  on  her  hardened  nature  to  soften 
at  the  tears,  or  melt  at  the  sorrows,  of  her  weaker 
sister.  She  heard  her  confession,  and  passed  sen 
tence  upon  her,  without  delay  or  preface,  as  upon  a 
self-condemned  criminal.  It  was  all  the  Little 
Lady's  own  wilful  fault.  It  was  all  for  the  want  of 
a  little  order,  a  little  forethought,  and  a  little  firm 
ness.  The  strong  hand  and  the  tight  rein  had  been 
lacking.  Had  she  rung  up  Domesticus  in  the 
morning?  Had  she  seen  that  every  living  human 
being,  in  the  house,  was  in  bed,  before  she  closed  her 
own  eyes  for  the  night?  Had  she  kept  everything 
under  lock  and  key  ?  Had  she  proper  weights  and 
measures  ?  Had  she  given  out  the  things  herself? 
The  Little  Lady  was  painfully  conscious  that  she 
had  given  out,  in  a  very  different  sense  from  that 
which  the  dowager  intended,  but  she  admitted  that 
she  had  been  derelict  at  all  points,  whereupon  she 
was  given  to  understand  that  she  was  a  doomed 
woman.  Domesticus  was  an  enemy,  against  whom 
not  to  take  the  initiative  was  to  be  lost  in  advance. 
In  the  war  with  him  there  was  no  quarter  and  no 
discharge.  His  emissaries  were  outlaws,  for  whom 
there  should  be  no  amnesty ;  sleepless  vigilance, 
incessant  marches,  counter-marches,  bivouacs,  sur 
prises,  captures  and  massacres  must  be  the  order  of 
the  day  and  of  the  night.  It  was  a  life-long  cru- 
3 


34  DO  ME  STIC  US. 

sade,  with  no  summer  quarters,  no  winter  quarters, 
no  truces,  not  even  a  parley  between  pickets.  The 
Little  Lady  sat  aghast  at  the  deliverances  of  this 
scarred  veteran  as  she  showed  how  fields  in  this 
way  might  be  won  in  the  warfare  with  Domesticus, 
and  how,  by  any  other  art  or  articles  of  war,  they 
were  sure  to  be  lost  Domesticus,  she  said,  was  the 
arch  enemy  of  all  order.  His  hand  was  against 
everything,  from  a  pewter  cup  to  the  stars  in  their 
courses.  The  groat  desire  of  his  wicked  heart  was 
the  reign  of  universal  breakage,  and  confusion,  and 
ruin ;  and  unless  vows  were  made  on  all  the  house 
hold  altars  of  the  land  that  he  himself  should  be 
bound,  hand  and  foot,  and  brought  into  due  sub 
jection,  chaos  would  come  again. 

"  But  is  the  fault  all  on  the  side  of  Domesticus  ?" 
said  the  Little  Lady. 

"  Certainly  it  is.  Whose  fault  can  it  be  but  his  ? 
It  is  the  total,  universal  depravity  of  his  nature." 

"  But  may  not  moral  suasion  have  some  effect  ?  " 

"  Moral  fiddlesticks  !  Have  you  never  heard  the 
story  of  Gehazi  ?  He  is  a  good  specimen  of  the 
whole  race.  If  his  master  could  not  keep  him 
from  going  to  the  bad,  what  can  a  poor  housewife 
do,  who  cannot  work  miracles  and  cure  lepers  ?" 

"And  you  really  think  there  is  no  room  or  hope 
for  improvement  ?"  said  the  Little  Lady,  sadly  and 
softly. 

"  Not  the  least ;  things  will  wax  worse  and  worse. 
The  great  point  with  Domesticus  is  to  get  the  most 
wages  for  the  least  labor ;  what  he  wants  is  to  play, 


THE  PRINCESS  PUG N AX.  35 

instead  of  working,  to  rule  instead  of  serving,  to 
get  all  the  ignorant,  inefficient  housekeepers  under 
his  thumb,  and  to  fasten  on  them  the  curse  of  being 
made  the  servants  of  servants." 

Just  at  this  point  there  was  a  sound  as  of  the 
distant  crash  of  falling  china,  and  the  Princess  Pug- 
nax  started,  and  sprang  to  her  feet,  with  a  jarring 
movement,  as  if  a  whole  system  of  unoiled  ma 
chinery  had  suddenly  been  set  in  motion  by  some 
irresistible,  unseen  force. 

"  I  gave  her  warning  last  night,  for  being  in  the 
house  five  minutes  late  and  this  is  her  revenge. 
Excuse  me  a  moment,  my  dear." 

"  I  must  go  now ;  thank  you,  very,  very  much,  for 
your  good  advice,"  said  the  Little  Lady,  rising  and 
taking  leave,  only  too  glad  to  cut  short  her  visit, 
under  cover  of  the  catastrophe  which,  she  felt  sure, 
was  impending  in  the  Pugnax  palace. 


CHAPTER  V. 

WEIGHTS    AND   MEASURES. 

SHE  came  out,  into  the  sunshine  of  the  street,  as 
from  a  prison  house  of  despair.  She  seemed  to 
herself  like  an  escaped  convict,  liable  at  any  instant 
to  re-arrest.  She  had  gone  for  comfort,  and  had 
received  condemnation.  She  had  asked  for  bread, 
and  had  been  given  a  stone.  Happily,  she  was  of  a 
temperament  buoyant  enough  to  make  the  best  of 
everything,  and  so  to  find  sermons,  with  practical 
applications,  even  in  the  stones  which  the  Princess 
Pugnax  had  thrown  at  her.  She  would  put  into 
immediate  practice  a  part  of  the  Pugnax  system. 
She  would  provide  a  bell  for  rousing  the  sound 
sleepers  on  her  top  story,  and  she  would  ring  it 
herself,  gently,  but  firmly.  She  would  have  patent 
.scales  and  a  steelyard,  and  some  standard  weights 
and  measures,  but  these  could  be  adjusted  and  em 
ployed  with  a  gracious  touch  as  well  as  with  the 
cruel  hand  of  an  executioner.  She  would  give  out 
all  the  things  herself,  but  it  should  be  done  with  a 
smile  and  not  a  frown.  It  was  not  in  her  nature  to 
substitute  law,  all  at  once,  for  love.  Her  whole 
being  revolted  against  the  cold,  harsh  doctrine  of 
the  stony-visaged  dame,  and  yet,  if  order,  and  firm- 
36 


WEIGHTS  AND  MEASURES.  37 

ness,  and  a  tight  rein,  were  the  prime  conditions  of 
success,  a  little  severity  in  appearance,  which  could 
always  be  tempered  by  underlying  tenderness,  might 
be  desirable,  if  not  indispensable. 

Accordingly,  the  next  break  of  dawn  inaugu 
rated  the  new  campaign.  The  Prince  was  startled 
from  his  morning  nap  by  a  harsh  jingle,  such  as 
had  never  before  disturbed  his  repose,  and  awoke  to 
descry  the  Princess  tugging  at  a  stout  silken  rope, 
pendent  on  the  wall,  within  easy  reach  of  her  pillow. 
Her  hair  was  dishevelled,  and  her  eyes  were  some 
what  wild,  for  she  had  lain  awake  half  the  night  in 
order  to  be  ready  to  ring  the  bell  at  the  proper 
and  appointed  moment,  but  there  was  a  fixed  pur 
pose  in  every  pull  of  the  cord,  and  even  in  the 
pause  which  followed  its  vibrations. 

"  What  are  you  about?"  asked  the  Prince. 

The  Princess  briefly  explained  that  this  was  the 
beginning  of  new  and  better  things ;  that  the  bell 
which  startled  him,  because  it  was  an  unusual 
sound,  was  one  to  which  he  would  soon  become 
accustomed ;  that  it  was  to  ring  out  all  laziness 
and  sleepiness  from  the  household,  and  ring  in 
a  time  of  better  breakfasts,  and  general  domestic 
bliss. 

The  Prince  did  not  think  she  could  keep  it  up. 

She  was  determined  to  keep  it  up  if  it  kept  her 
up  all  night. 

"  Suppose  you  should  be  ill  ?  " 

She  would  have  to  be  very  ill,  yes  at  death's 
door,  before  she  would  be  unable  to  reach  the  bell 


3  3  DOMESTICUS. 

cord;  besides  she  was  not  ill,  but  unusually  well,  and 
hoped  to  keep  so. 

"  Suppose  they  won't  get  up?  " 

"  Then  they  will  all  have  to  go." 

"  Suppose  there  should  be  guests  in  the  palace 
and  they  should  be  waked  out  of  their  best  sleep, 
at  such  an  unseasonable  hour,  what  would  they 
think?" 

"  They  would  think  they  were  in  a  place  where 
order  reigned,  which  is  heaven's  first  law,  and  ought 
therefore  to  be  enforced  as  early  in  the  morning  as 
possible.  Besides,  have  you  not  always  insisted 
that  guests  must  take  the  risk  of  whatever  goes  on 
in  the  house  they  visit?" 

"  Ordinary  risks,  yes,  but  this  is  something  extra 
ordinary,"  said  the  Prince. 

"  What  is  there  extraordinary  about  it  ?  The 
Princess  Pugnax  has  done  it  for  years  and  years, 
and  you  ought  to  be  glad  and  thankful  if  I  can  do 
as  well  as  she  does." 

"I  don't  believe  it  will  last,"  said  the  Prince, 
sighing  over  his  lost  nap. 

"  That  is  the  way  you  always  discourage  me," 
said  the  Princess,  and  she  repressed  some  unavailing 
tears,  while  the  stony-hearted  Prince  closed  his  eyes 
and  started  to  count  the  odd  numbers,  from  one  to 
five  thousand,  in  the  hope  of  thereby  reinstating 
himself  in  the  slumber  from  which  he  had  been 
so  rudely  roused. 

Betimes,  on  the  same  day,  everything  eatable  and 
drinkable,  every  bar  and  cake  of  soap,  every  box  of 


;r/:/r;//7:s-  AXD  MK.-ISCKES.  39 

matches,  every  paper  of  starch,  every  grain  of  salt, 
was  secured  behind  locked  doors,  and  the  process 
of  giving  out  by  weight  and  measure  was  begun, 
with  a  degree  of  solemnity  which  was  meant  to  be 
most  impressive,  but  which,  in  the  irreverent  eyes  of 
Domcsticus,  was  so  supremely  comical  that  if  he 
had  had  any  visible  sides  he  would  have  split  them 
with  laughter. 

When  the  Prince  came  home  to  dinner,  he  found 
the  Little  Lady  wearing  a  strangely  defiant  air 
which  was  quite  alarming.  She  had  a  long,  thin 
key,  slung  at  her  girdle ;  there  was  a  grating  sound 
in  her  voice;  her  lips  were  compressed,  and  when 
she  kissed  him,  as  her  custom  was,  twice,  she 
startled  him  by  saying  that  she  had  given  out  all 
he  could  have  for  two  days.  It  gradually  dawned 
upon  him  that  the  new  regime,  ushered  in  by  the 
early  morning  bell,  included  an  entire  reorgan 
ization  of  the  establishment,  and  that  all  supplies 
were  being  doled  out  by  the  exact  quantity.  The 
household  had  been  put  upon  rations,  and  what  was 
not  by  weight  was  to  be  by  measure.  Like  a  wise 
prince,  as  he  was,  he  forbore  any  protest  or  objec 
tion,  having,  during  the  day,  felt  a  little  ashamed  of 
his  heartlessness  in  the  matter  of  the  bell. 

The  Little  Lady  was  thus  left  without  obstruction 
in  the  pathway  of  reform.  The  only  drawback  to 
the  new  system  of  the  giving  out  of  supplies  was 
that  her  pound  was  a  very  variable  quantity.  Some 
times,  it  corresponded  to  our  troy  weight,  and 
sometimes,  it  was  avoirdupois,  and  sometimes,  it 


4Q  DOMESTICUS. 

was  of  a  standard  entirely  her  own,  wholly  unrec 
ognized  by  custom  or  statute.  She  did  her  best, 
however,  to  keep  her  hand  steady  and  her  scales 
true,  and  to  dispense  her  stores  according  to  a  just 
economy,  affecting  to  disregard  all  the  signs  of  dis 
pleasure  and  disgust,  which,  like  lowering  clouds, 
betokened  a  coming  storm. 

Domesticus  knew  perfectly  well  how  to  out 
manoeuvre  and  out-general  the  Little  Lady,  and, 
after  amusing  himself  for  some  time  by  causing  her 
to  be  interrupted  in  every  conversation,  wakening 
her  out  of  every  afternoon  nap,  startling  her  at  the 
moment  of  seating  herself  at  the  table,  and  even 
breaking  in  upon  her  most  sacred  moments  of 
privacy,  with  demands  for  things  she  had  forgotten 
to  give  out,  or  which  some  unexpected  emergency 
required  to  be  doubled  in  quantity,  he  marshaled 
his  forces  for  a  mutinous  revolt.  Possibly  the 
weights  and  measures  might  have  been  tolerated 
for  a  longer  period,  but  the  too  punctual  ringing  of 
the  bell,  which  as  the  clock  struck  the  hour  of  ten 
at  night,  like  the  curfew  of  William  the  Conqueror, 
tolled  the  knell  of  parting  for  the  lingering  fol 
lowers,  below  stairs,  was  beyond  endurance. 

One  fine  morning,  the  Prince  found  himself  at  his 
breakfast  table  without  a  drop  of  coffee,  or  a  morsel 
of  bread,  or  a  pat  of  butter.  There  was  no  sugar,  no 
milk,  no  syrup  for  possible  cakes,  no  salt  for  expected 
eggs ;  in  place  of  the  accustomed  chop,  there  was 
an  empty  platter ;  and  worse  than  all,  there  was  no 
explanation,  but  only  ominous  and  foreboding 


WEIGHTS  AND  MEASURES.  4I 

silence.  Finally,  upon  compulsion,  the  declaration 
was  extorted  that  there  was  nothing  eatable  in  the 
house,  outside  of  the  store-room.  The  Little  Lady 
appeared,  in  all  the  loveliness  of  her  early  morning 
attire,  and  her  eye  took  in  the  situation  at  once. 
She  had  given  out  all  the  needed  supplies  for  the 
day,  with  the  liberality  of  a  Princess,  heaped  up, 
pressed  down,  and  running  over,  but  they  had  been 
secretly,  or  surreptitiously,  kept  back,  and  now  the 
pretended  deficiency  was  to  be  laid  at  her  door,  and 
she  must  surrender  her  key,  or  her  empire  would 
be  in  revolt  Surrender  she  would  not.  But  the 
Prince  must  have  his  breakfast,  and  a  salt-cellar 
without  salt  was  something  not  to  be  tolerated  for  a 
moment.  She  said  not  a  word,  but  descended  with 
an  unfaltering  step  into  the  arena.  The  insurgents 
were  prepared  for  her  coming.  The  whole  stock 
of  supplies  had  been  diverted  by  their  connivance, 
and  she  was  to  be  starved  into  submission.  In  the 
pause  which  followed  her  appearing,  the  combined 
charge  was  made.  She  was  no  lady ;  no  decent  per 
son  could  live  with  the  likes  of  her;  all  the  house 
hold  divinities  were  invoked  against  her  stinginess, 
and  the  ultimatum  was  announced — the  key  must 
be  delivered  up  as  the  price  of  peace. 

The  Princess  stood  firm  ;  she  charged  back  upon 
the  mutineers  their  treachery  and  treason ;  the 
combat  thickened;  the  Prince  descended  in  alarm; 
the  tumult  raged,  and  when  order  was  at  last 
restored,  and  the  Little  Lady,  who  had  maintained 
her  position  to  the  end,  declared  that  she  would 


42  DO  ME  STIC  US. 

proceed  to  the  store-room,  and  give  out  the  things 
for  a  breakfast  which  must  be  prepared  on  the 
instant,  she  discovered,  to  her  dismay  and  confu 
sion,  on  putting  her  hand  to  her  girdle,  that  the 
key  was  gone.  Whether  she  had  mislaid  it  by 
accident,  or  whether,  by  some  artful  trick  or  device 
of  Domesticus,  it  had  been  spirited  away  into  the 
limbo  of  lost  things,  will  never  be  known.  It  could 
not  be  found ;  resort  was  had  to  violence ;  the  store 
room  door  was  forced  and  the  wants  of  the  house 
hold  supplied. 

With  that  breaking  in,  although  never  ac 
knowledged  by  the  Little  Lady,  the  whole  short 
lived  system  of  weights  and  measures,  and  daily 
dispensations  was  broken  up.  There  was  delay 
in  adjusting  a  new  lock.  The  substituted  key, 
somehow,  would  not  cling  to  her  dainty  waist. 
The  way  to  the  store-room  seemed  longer.  The 
door  was  oftener  left  open.  By  degrees,  the  ringing 
of  the  curfew  became  a  neglected  duty,  and  one 
morning,  when  the  Little  Lady  started  from  her 
slumbers,  to  find  the  hour  long  past  when  she 
ought  to  have  sounded  the  awakening  alarm,  as  she 
pulled  the  silken  cord,  with  sudden  force,  it  gave 
way,  broke  at  the  ceiling,  and  falling  upon  her  neck, 
and  shoulders,  and  slender  form,  encircled  her  like 
the  coils  of  a  serpent. 

It  was  never  replaced. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

DOMESTICUS  AND   THE   CHILDREN. 

THE  Upas  tree  which  Domesticus  had  planted  in 
the  Little  Lady's  bower  of  bliss,  whose  roots 
\veie  underneath  the  foundation,  and  whose  branches 
overshadowed  the  roof,  bore  some  of  its  deadliest 
fruit  in  the  Nursery.  As  the  palace,  in  due  time, 
was  occupied  by  new  comers  it  was  painful  to  see 
how  they  would  get  into  the  grasp  of  Domesticus 
as  soon  as  they  were  born.  He  lay  in  wait  for 
them,  like  an  Ogre  of  the  old  school.  The  first 
little  princess  was  the  special  victim  of  his  devices. 
The  Little  Lady  considered  that  what  her  new 
maternity  most  lacked  was  experience,  and  Domes 
ticus  undertook  to  supply  the  deficiency  in  the  guise 
of  an  elderly  female  who  had  been  the  mother  of 
thirteen  children.  It  was  soon  apparent  that  she 
regarded  herself  as  charged  with  the  care  of  two 
infants,  instead  of  one,  and  that  mother  and  babe 
were  equally  subject  to  her  sway.  Her  experience 
was  like  the  stream  of  Time.  It  began  in  a  remote 
past,  and  meandered,  through  long  intermediate 
periods,  down  to  the  moment  of  her  present  service. 
It  bore  on  its  bosom  the  undisclosed  secrets  and 
the  hidden  scandals  of  many  generations.  In  the 

43 


44 


DOMESTICUS. 


abstract,  it  embraced  everything  within  the  compass 
of  human  affairs;  in  the  concrete,  it  was  mainly 
conversant  with  catnip  tea,  paregoric,  and  pins.  It 
must  be  remembered  that,  at  the  time  of  the  birth 
of  the  Princess  Prima,  for  this  was  her  name, 
neither  the  telephone,  the  electric  light,  nor  the  safety 
pin,  were  known  to  the  inventive  arts  in  Magna 
Patria,  if  indeed  they  are  known  there  to  this  day ; 
and  that  the  culling  of  such  simples  as  catnip,  and 
the  mixing  of  such  draughts  as  paregoric,  were  part 
and  parcel  of  the  orthodox  cruelties  practiced  upon 
helpless  infancy.  To  these  inflictions  Domesticus 
lent  a  ready  and  willing  hand.  Dean  Swift's  famous 
plan  for  preventing  the  increase  of  population  in 
Ireland,  by  the  systematic  slaughter  of  all  Irish 
babies,  which  was  only  one  of  his  many  huge, 
coarse  jokes,  would  at  all  times  have  been  dead 
earnest  to  Domesticus.  Why  else  did  he  envelop 
each  new-born  member  of  the  human  family  in 
layer  upon  layer,  and  fold  upon  fold,  of  impervious 
material,  making  the  hapless  victim  more  fit  for  the 
companionship  of  mummies  than  of  mammas? 
Why  else  persist  in  covering  up  its  tiny  breathing 
apparatus,  so  as  to  make  its  incipient  efforts  at 
respiration  almost  impossible  of  success,  and  so  as 
to  induce  apoplexy  in  the  infant  of  a  day  ?  Why 
else  persist  in  excluding  the  free,  fresh  air  of  hea 
ven,  as  an  element  unfriendly  to  a  child  of  earth  ? 
Why  else  persist  in  forcing  into  its  thimble-sized 
stomach  five  times  the  volume  of  fluid  it  could 
contain,  and  then  subject  it  to  the  never-ending, 


DOMESTICUS  AND   THE  CHILDREN. 


45 


still-beginning  trot,  on  inelastic  knees,  such  as  those 
of  the  little  Prima's  dry  nurse  Experientia  ? 

Meanwhile,  in  spite  of  Domesticus,  the  fair  flow 
eret  grew  on,  in  a  natural,  healthy  way  of  its  own, 
resisting  these  baneful  influences  with  all  the  minia 
ture  forces  with  which  Nature  had  endowed  her. 
But  to  no  purpose.  At  every  outcry,  Domesticus 
was  ready  with  a  fiction,  founded,  only  too  truly,  on 
fact.  The  little  darling  was  abused,  so  it  was, 
everybody  abused  it,  so  they  did,  and  it  must  have 
some  catnip.  Thus  was  poison  poured  into  the  ear 
of  earliest  infancy,  while  poison  was  being  poured 
down  its  throat,  and  as  the  imagined  occasions  of 
abuse  multiplied,  so  did  the  catnip  increase  in  quan 
tity  and  strength,  the  doses  of  paregoric  became 
more  potent,  and  the  pins  more  frequent.  The 
young  Princess  struggled  and  fought,  with  all  the 
feeble  might  of  her  legs  and  lungs,  and  made  night 
and  day,  by  turns,  hideous  with  her  protests,  but 
the  infant  Hercules  himself  could  not  have  stran 
gled  the  serpent  Domesticus  if  he  had  crawled  into 
his  cradle.  The  previous  question  of  the  morning, 
the  subsequent  question  of  the  evening,  and  the 
intermediate  question  of  the  day,  was  very  apt  to 
be,  "  What  makes  that  child  cry?" 

"  It  is  because  she  is  abused,  she  is,"  said  Exper 
ientia. 

"  I  fear  it  is  total  depravity,"  said  the  Prince. 

"  I  believe  it  is  pins,"  said  the  Little  Lady. 

And,  on  a  careful  investigation  it  generally 
proved  to  be  pins. 


46  DOMESTICUS. 

Thereupon,  after  a  time,  pins  were  proscribed ;  and 
Prima  and  the  succeeding  little  prince  and  princess 
were  sewed  up  every  morning,  and  ripped  up  every 
night,  and  worked  over  and  over,  like  old  time  sam 
plers,  until  they  had  stitches  in  their  sides,  and  their 
backs,  and  all  over. 

But  the  Little  Lady,  to  whom  the  new  heart 
throbs,  which  began  when  she  felt  the  first  touch  of 
Prima's  velvet  cheek  upon  her  breast,  were  a  fresh 
inspiration,  only  waited  to  recruit  her  strength,  in 
order  to  rally  all  the  forces  of  instinct  and  affection 
to  the  defence  of  her  offspring.  Windows  were 
thrown  open,  flannels  were  torn  off,  the  vile  mix 
tures  went  to  the  ash-heap,  and  Prima's  little  bare 
pink  legs,  and  arms,  and  breast,  and  back,  were  bathed 
in  sunshine  and  pure  air,  as  freely  as  in  the  tem 
pered  waters  of  the  bath,  or  in  the  overflowing 
fountain  of  maternal  love.  Here,  in  a  double 
sense,  was  a  new  life  for  the  Princess.  The  fresh 
existence,  whose  tiny  tendrils  reached  forth  to  draw 
support  and  sustenance  from  her  own  life,  seemed 
to  have  its  counterpart  in  the  responsive  tenderness 
of  her  sustaining  and  protecting  love,  so  different 
from  any  earlier  feeling,  so  transcendent  and 
unique;  at  first,  the  simplest  instinct  groping  in  the 
dark  and  the  dawn,  but  how  soon  expanding,  until 
in  its  all-embracing  care,  it  seemed  a  second  Provi 
dence  in  the  sphere  of  home. 

One  thing  was  certain :  Domesticus  should  not 
come  between  her  and  her  children.  Sooner  than 
have  them  gobbled  up  by  this  arch  destroyer,  she 


DOMESTICUS  AND  THE  CHILDREN.  47 

would  devour  them  herself,  as  did  Saturn.  She 
would  do  all  the  washing,  and  dressing,  and  undress 
ing,  and  putting  to  sleep,  and  waking  up.  No  voice 
but  her  own  should  soothe  or  chide;  no  hand  but 
her's  caress  or  correct.  Alas  !  the  delegation  to 
Domesticus,  at  least  in  part,  was  only  too  soon  a  dire 
necessity.  The  papoose  of  the  Imperial  City  will 
not  submit  to  being  suspended  from  a  bracket,  or 
borne  on  the  back,  while  the  daily  round  of  mater 
nal  duties  is  being  performed.  Neither  the  prime 
val  forest,  nor  the  aboriginal  methods  of  Magna 
Patria,  could  find  place  within  metropolitan  limits. 
Civilization  was  the  ally  of  Domesticus. 

But  the  Princess  was  determined  not  to  be  entan 
gled  again  in  the  meshes  of  any  experience  except 
her  own,  and  in  her  efforts  at  maternal  independ 
ence  she  went  from  one  extreme  to  another ;  from 
the  wisdom  of  the  herb-mixing  ancient  to  the 
unwisdom  personified  in  one  of  those  youthful 
forms,  with  pendent  braids,  and  high-necked  aprons, 
whom  Domesticus  sent  forth,  duly  commissioned 
to  mind  children,  and  carefully  instructed  not  to 
mind  their  parents.  Divers  specific  rules  and 
regulations  he  imparted,  besides,  out  of  sheer  mal 
evolence.  The  child,  if  propelled  in  a  miniature 
chariot,  should  always  be  stopped  under  the  full 
blaze  of  the  sun,  while  the  propelling  attendant 
exchanged  views,  on  topics  of  common  interest, 
with  other  propellers.  The  child  when  able  to 
walk,  should  be  jerked  over  gutters  and  along  side 
walks,  by  the  hand,  so  that  the  mechanical  power, 


48 


DOMESTICUS. 


gained  by  the  leverage  of  the  arm,  might  be 
brought  to  bear  upon  the  entire  frame,  in  aid  of  its 
permanent  distortion  and  dislocation.  Excursions 
to  remote  places,  in  the  social  interest  of  Domesti- 
cus  ;  surreptitious  supplies  of  indigestible  sweets ; 
threatenings  of  swift  and  awful  retribution  in  case 
of  disclosure  of  any  doubtful  doings  of  Domes- 
ticus;  the  peopling  of  the  dark  with  monsters 
and  hobgoblins ;  the  investing  even  of  innocent 
ragpickers  and  sweeps  with  supposed  diabolism 
towards  the  entire  infant  population  of  the  globe — 
are  only  samples  of  these  special,  unsealed  instruc 
tions. 

Nevertheless,  the  Little  Lady's  vigilance,  though 
sorely  taxed,  was  never  intermitted.  Her  mother- 
liness  was  always  at  the  meridian.  It  was  radiant 
with  all  die  brightness  of  her  nature,  and  it  had  a 
potency  which  was  irresistible.  So  it  happened 
that  the  wiles  of  Domesticus  were  held  in  check, 
and  most  of  the  mischief  he  plotted  against  the 
children  came  to  naught,  and  in  spite  of  the  many 
trials  and  many  failures  of  the  struggle,  there  were 
some  bright  memories  of  loving  and  faithful  service 
to  the  little  ones,  from  hands  and  hearts,  which, 
though  under  the  original  jurisdiction  of  Domes 
ticus,  and  owing  native  allegiance  to  him,  were  so 
naturalized  in  the  special  domain  of  home  that  they 
came  to  share  its  sacred  associations  and  affections. 
This  was  a  part  of  the  open  reward  of  mother-love 
which  so  often  can  be  seen  only  in  secret.  What 
watchings  were  hers  through  long  nights  of  suffer- 


DOMKST/Cl'S  AND   /'//A'  CHILDREN.  ^ 

ing,  made  so  much  harder  lor  the  watcher  because 
the  little  sufferer  could  not  describe  or  declare  its 
needs,  except  by  cry,  or  moan,  or  convulsive  move 
ment  ;  what  patient  waiting,  alike  in  hope  or  fear, 
for  the  dreaded,  or  impatiently  expected  crisis,  of 
disease;  what  bearing'  of  all  the  myriad  burdens 
which  childhood  in  its  thoughtless,  or  perverse, 
or,  far  oftener,  its  undisciplined,  or  unsound,  con 
dition,  puts  upon  the  parental  heart;  and  what 
never  ceasing  care,  carried  in  its  inmost  core,  by 
day  and  by  night,  at  home,  abroad  and  everywhere. 

She  was  never  separated  from  the  children  by  sea 
or  land,  rarely  was  she  beyond  call,  never  did  she 
leave  them  a  moment  for  any  pleasure  at  the  cost 
of  duty.  And  so  they  grew,  under  her  eye,  and 
hand,  and  heart,  and  the  little  Prima,  the  firstling  of 
the  flock,  soon  expanded  into  rare  beauty,  and  love 
liness,  which  were  shared  by  a  sister  and  brother 
who  came,  in  time,  to  be  her  playmates. 

The  Prince  was  of  very  little  use  in  the  care  or 
training  of  the  children.  If  they  were  little  ailing, 
he  thought  they  were  very  ill.  If  they  were  very 
ill,  he  thought  they  were  going  to  die.  He  would 
misapprehend  colic  for  temper.  He  thought  four 
o'clock  in  the  morning  an  unreasonable  hour  for  a 
frolic  with  a  wide-awake  baby.  He  soon  tired  of 
protracted  vigils  and  the  walking  up  and  down,  in 
the  small  hours  of  the  night,  with  the  small  occupant 
of  his. arms  persistently  bent  on  keeping  as  many 
members  of  the  family,  as  possible,  astir  and  out  of 
bed.  He  was  too  strict;  he  was  too  indulgent;  he 
4 


,jO  DO  ME  STIC  US. 

corrected  too  harshly;  he  punished  injudiciously; 
he  forgave  without  waiting  for  due  penitence ;  he 
allowed  prohibited  things  ;  he  proposed  impossible 
projects ;  he  made  irredeemable  promises ;  he  did 
his  best  to  spoil  the  whole  brood,  but  he  never 
interfered  with  the  reign  of  the  Queen-mother,  and 
in  this,  he  shewed  himself  a  discerning  Prince, 
whose  example  is  to  be  commended  to  all  fathers 
who  fancy  there  can  be  two  sovereigns  in  the  same 
empire,  or  any  substitute,  in  love  or  law,  for  a 
mother's  heart,  or  a  mother's  care. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

DOMESTICUS  AFRICANUS. 

IF  I  have  omitted,  thus  far,  any  mention  of  that 
prime  factor  in  the  forces  of  the  enemy  with 
whom  the  Little  Lady  was  waging  her  wean-  war, 
Domesticus  Africanus,  it  is  because  his  importance 
requires  a  special  and  separate  treatment.  His 
dark  shadow  fell  across  the  path  of  our  Princess  at 
an  early  point  of  her  progress.  The  ineradicable 
hostility  of  Domesticus  Hibernicus  to  this  dusky 
co-worker  in  the  sphere  of  household  service  was 
something  which  had  often  proved  an  explosive 
fire-damp  in  her  subterranean  quarters.  Domesti 
cus  Africanus  was  an  exotic  which  could  not  thrive 
unless  in  company  with  a  kindred  stock.  His 
presence  was  a  sure  signal  of  disturbance,  espe 
cially  at  meal  times,  below  stairs,  as  Domesticus 
Hibernicus  drew  the  line  of  non-intercourse  just 
where  Shylock  drew  his,  in  his  relations  with  the 
Venetian  Gentiles ;  he  would  wait  with  him,  wash 
with  him,  scrub  with  him,  gossip  with  him,  but  he 
would  not  eat  with  him.  The  pre-eminent  social 
qualities  of  Domesticus  Africanus  in  his  native  cir 
cles  were  perennial  sources  of  disorder  in  the 
domain  of  duty ;  his  adaptation  for  elegant  leisure 

5' 


52  DOMESTICUS. 

was  a  continuously  demoralizing  element,  and  his 
religious  enthusiasm  was  too  exalted  in  its  vocal 
pitch  for  the  precincts  of  a  palace,  and  too  absorbing 
in  its  requirements  for  the  routine  of  daily  work. 

Besides  all  this,  at  the  period  in  the  history  of  Magna 
Patria  at  which  my  story  has  now  arrived,  Domesti- 
cus  Africanus  was  assuming  an  importance  that  was 
overshadowing  and  supreme.  He  was  not  indige 
nous  to  that  fair  realm,  nor  had  he  come  of  his  own 
will,  from  beyond  seas,  to  its  shores.  As  my  read 
ers  may  all  have  learned,  long  ago,  Magna  Patria  is 
a  cluster  of  sister  sovereignties,  born,  after  agoniz 
ing  birth-throes,  into  the  family  of  the  nations,  and 
bound  together  by  a  compact,  meant  to  be  firm 
enough  to  keep  them  all  under  a  common  rule; 
elastic  enough  to  leave  them  all  free  to  rule  them 
selves  within  their  separate  and  several  bounds ;  and 
broad  enough  to  open  and  let  in  new  and  equal 
members  of  the  Sisterhood,  as  vacant  spaces  of  the 
fair  realm  should  be  occupied. 

Brought,  as  a  captive,  from  his  native  tropics, 
Domesticus  Africanus  had  been  held  in  bondage, 
throughout  the  Sisterhood,  until,  in  course  of 
time  in  those  parts  of  it  where  his  labor  was  not 
especially  required,  because  the  zone  was  so 
tempered  that  no  man  was  driven  by  the  sun 
from  his  mid-day  work,  he  was  suffered  to  go  free 
and  of  his  own  will  to  work,  or  not  work, — which 
was  often  more  to  his  taste, — whereas  in  those 
parts  where  labor  must  be  under  a  torrid  heat, 


DOMESTICUS  AFRICANUS.  53 

which  he  alone  could  best  endure,  he  was  kept  en 
slaved. 

And  thus  it  came  about  that  an  invisible  line  was 
drawn  across  the  fair  land  of  the  Sisterhood,  on  the 
nether  side  of  which  Domesticus  Africanus  was  a 
thing,  and  a  chattel,  and  was  bought  and  sold,  and 
on  the  upper  side  of  which  he  was  a  man  and  a 
person  and  so,  if  being  on  the  nether  side,  he  could 
contrive  to  get  to  the  upper  side  and  stay  there,  a 
magical  change  was  instantly  wrought  in  him, 
whereby  he  became  a  person,  instead  of  a  thing, 
and  belonged  to  himself,  instead  of  the  master 
or  mistress  whom  he  had  left  behind.  But  he  was 
always  liable  to  be  pursued,  and  captured,  and  sent 
back,  because  it  was  a  part  of  the  compact  of  the 
Sisterhood  that  every  such  runaway  might  law 
fully,  be  caught  and  reclaimed,  and  in  such  case, 
be  delivered  up,  like  any  other  stray  animal,  on 
proof  of  property,  to  the  rightful  owner,  and  there 
upon  become  once  more,  and  immediately,  a  thing 
and  not  a  person. 

It  was  quite  otherwise,  however,  if  his  master 
or  mistress  happened  to  bring  Domesticus  Afri 
canus  across  the  invisible  line,  and  while  on  the 
upper  side,  he  could  contrive  to  get  away  from 
them,  because  then  they  might  not  reclaim  him, 
but  the  magical  change  was  a  permanent  one, 
and  he  became  a  person,  and  belonged  to  him 
self,  by  a  free  and  absolute  title.  These  arrange 
ments  were  so  complicated  that  Domesticus 
Africanus  was  a  long  while  in  coming  to  any 


54 


DOMESTICUS. 


definite  understanding  of  the  possible  conditions 
under  which  he  might  cease  to  be  a  thing,  and  be 
come  a  person;  and  he  was,  in  the  main,  well  satis 
fied  to  be  and  remain  a  thing,  and  not  to  become  a 
person,  so  long  as  he  did  not  know  the  difference, 
and  nobody  told  him. 

It  is  easy  to  see  that  as  Domesticus  Africanus 
grew  and  multiplied  on  the  nether  side  of  the  invis 
ible  line,  and  his  progeny  came  to  be  counted  by 
the  million,  and  all  these  were  property,  just  as 
much  as  the  cattle  on  the  hills,  or  the  crops  in  the 
fields,  the  good  people  who  possessed  all  this  property, 
which  constituted  the  main  part  of  their  wealth, 
and  who  believed  in  their  hearts  that  it  was  a  part 
of  the  duly  established  order  of  created  things  that 
they  should  have  and  enjoy  their  own,  naturally 
came  to  be  very  jealous  of  any  interference  with 
their  rights.  In  their  eyes,  the  holding  of  Domes 
ticus  Africanus  in  bondage  was  an  Institution,  and, 
by  and  by,  a  great  many  of  them  began  to  think, 
and  to  assert,  that  it  was  a  divine  Institution,  to  be 
upheld  and  perpetuated  by  all  possible  means,  and 
this  not  only  in  their  own  selfish  interest,  but  for 
the  well-being  of  Domesticus  Africanus.  He  could 
not  thrive,  they  claimed,  by  himself,  but  must  be 
under  guardianship,  and  pupilage,  and  government. 
A  child  of  the  tropics,  he  must  be  kept  in  the  glow 
and  warmth  of  the  sunshine,  and  being  inclined  by 
his  nature  to  bask  in  it,  in  idleness,  he  must  be  made 
to  labor,  for  his  own  good,  and  his  service  should 
be  gratuitous,  as  a  due  return  for  the  protection  and 


DOMESTICUS  AFRICANUS. 


55 


nurture  he  received,  and  for  which  the  devotion  of 
a  life-time  was  only  a  fair  equivalent. 

Accordingly,  they  were  greatly  indignant  against 
the  good  people  who,  living  on  the  upper  side  of 
the  invisible  line,  where  there  was  no  ownership  in 
Domesticus  Africanus,  claimed  and  insisted  that  he 
ought,  everywhere,  to  be  a  person  and  not  a  thing ; 
and  that  to  own  him,  or  hold  him,  or  buy  him,  or 
sell  him,  was  a  wrong  and  a  crime.  The  people 
of  this  way  of  thinking  hated  the  invisible  line, 
although  they  could  no  more  abolish  it  than  they 
could  wipe  out  the  Equator.  They  hated  the  In 
stitution,  which  so  far  from  being  divine,  they  de 
clared  to  be  of  the  Devil.  They  hated  the  compact, 
which  made  it  possible  to  transform  Domesticus 
Africanus  into  a  thing  after  he  had  once  chosen  to 
be  a  person,  and  made  his  choice  effectual  by  get 
ting  to  the  upper  side  of  the  line.  Carrying  these 
ideas  into  execution,  they  devised  ways  and  means 
by  which,  if  Domesticus  Africanus  was  once  so 
lucky  as  to  get  both  feet  across  the  line,  he  could, 
either  above  ground  or  under  ground,  be  caught 
up  and  spirited  away,  beyond  reach  of  pursuers, 
or  possibility  of  capture.  They  raised  a  great 
outcry  against  the  Institution  ;  they  declared  that 
it  ought  to  be  abolished,  and  cut  up,  root  and 
branch,  and  were  so  loud  and  violent  that  they 
came,  in  their  turn,  to  be  hated  and  dreaded  by  the 
whole  of  the  Sisterhood  on  the  nether  side  of  the 
invisible  line,  as  much  as  they  themselves  hated 
the  Institution. 


56  DOMESTICUS. 

So,  in  trie  nature  of  things,  a  conflict  was  inevitable. 
More  and  more,  the  good  people  to  whom  Domes 
ticus  Africanus  was  a  thing,  and  not  a  person, 
became  alienated  from  the  good  people  to  whom 
he  was  a  person,  and  not  a  thing.  They  tried,  by 
every  means,  to  protect  themselves  against  spoliation, 
but  their  riches  were  of  a  kind  very  apt  to  take  to 
themselves  legs  and  run  away.  In  vain  did  they  stop 
the  ears  of  Domesticus  Africanus,  so  that  he  should 
not  hear  the  outcry;  in  vain  did  they  blindfold 
his  eyes  and  shackle  his  limbs,  so  that  he  could 
not  find  his  way,  if  he  would,  across  the  invisible 
line.  He  became  a  perpetual  source  of  discord 
and  disturbance.  No  one  was  permitted  to  teach 
him  to  read,  or  to  write,  or  to  think,  and  yet,  in 
spite  of  all  these  precautions,  nothing  was  more 
common  than  that  he  would  scamper  off  and  get 
over  the  line,  and  then  it  would  be  a  world  of 
trouble  to  catch  him  and  get  him  back,  and  very 
often,  he  was  never  caught  or  got  back,  but  was  an 
absolutely  lost  thing  to  his  master  or  mistress. 

It  gradually  became  more  and  more  hazardous 
for  the  good  people  of  Netherdom  to  come,  even 
for  a  season,  to  the  upper  side  of  the  invisible  line, 
with  so  much  as  a  single  specimen  of  Domesticus 
Africanus  in  their  train,  because  of  the  keen  scent 
which  the  Abolishers,  as  they  were  called,  had 
for  this  species  of  game,  and  their  many  expert 
ways  of  bagging  it,  in  its  own  interest,  to  the 
utter  extinction  of  all  pre-existing  rights  of  prop 
erty. 


DOMEST1CUS  APR  1C  ANUS.  57 

All  this  was  exceedingly  aggravating,  and  the 
wisest  and  shrewdest  of  the  good  people  with 
whom  the  Institution  was  the  corner  stone  of 
their  social  fabric,  came  to  see,  clearly,  that  unless 
by  their  own  efforts,  and  with  the  help  of  their 
fellows  on  the  upper  side  of  the  line  who  were  not 
in  accord  with  the  Abolishers,  they  could  gain 
and  keep  the  ascendency  in  the  Sisterhood,  they 
would  always  be  at  a  disadvantage,  and  the  Institu 
tion  would  be  in  constant  and  increasing  danger. 
They  must  rule  or  be  ruined. 

Thus  they  were,  of  necessity,  from  their  point  of 
view,  unable  and  unwilling  to  let  bad  enough  alone. 
They  must  needs  make  things  worse,  by  desperately 
claiming  and  proclaiming  that  the  Institution  was  a 
vital  element,  to  grow  with  the  growth  and  strengthen 
with  the  strength  of  the  fair  land  of  the  Sisterhood, 
lest  the  just  equilibrium  between  its  various  members 
should  be  disturbed.  And  whenever  new  domains 
came  to  be  added,  and  the  old  boundaries  were 
enlarged  to  take  in  broad  areas,  where  there  were 
no  lines,  visible  or  invisible,  they  insisted  that  the 
Institution  should  be  set  up  wherever  they  chose 
to  plant  it,  and  make  it  grow  in  the  virgin  soil  of 
these  new  parts  and  places.  But  to  this  the  good 
people  of  the  upper  side  of  the  invisible  line  would 
not  agree.  In  the  main,  they  were  willing  enough 
to  abide  by  the  compact,  and  not  to  meddle  with 
the  Institution,  or  with  Domesticus  Africanus.  They 
were  even  willing  to  aid  in  silencing  the  outcry 
against  them,  and  in  suppressing  the  obnoxious 


5  8  DOMESTICUS. 

Abolishers,  and  multiplying  the  ways  and  means 
by  which  the  compact  as  to  the  fugitives  should  be 
made  effectual,  and  to  bring  out  shot-guns  and 
soldiers,  if  need  be,  to  make  sure  the  capture  and 
return  of  any  stray  chattel  who,  in  the  effort  sur 
reptitiously  to  become  a  person,  had  been  seized 
by  his  owner  and  must  be  relegated  to  serfdom. 

All  this  seemed  right  and  just  or,  at  least,  neces 
sary,  however  it  might  shock  some  sensibilities  and 
go  counter  to  some  consciences ;  but  here  the  line 
of  concession  was  drawn,  and  while  the  compact 
must  be  kept,  and  the  Institution  tolerated  where  it 
existed,  not  a  foot,  nor  an  inch,  of  new  ground  should 
be  yielded  to  it.  It  should  be  kept  penned  and 
chained  within  the  limits  where  it  belonged,  as  its 
victims  were  sometimes  penned  and  chained  by 
their  taskmasters ;  and  it  should  be  girdled  round 
with  fire,  until  it  worked  out  its  own  destruction 
and  stung  itself  to  death.  And  this  was  a  new 
and  growing  grievance,  and  prolific  source  of  dis 
content  to  the  masters  and  mistresses  of  Domes- 
ticus  Africanus. 

On  both  sides  of  the  invisible  line,  some  things 
were  forgotten.  On  the  upper  side,  they  forgot 
that  the  Institution  had,  aforetime,  been  a  part  of 
their  own  social  system,  and  that  it  had  ceased  to 
exist  with  them,  not  altogether  because  the  fathers 
on  that  side  of  the  line  were  any  more  virtuous  or 
just  than  their  fellow-men,  but  because  they  did  not 
need  it  any  longer.  On  the  nether  side,  they  forgot 
that  the  fathers  of  the  Sisterhood  never  meant  that 


DOMESTICUS  AFRICANUS.  $g 

the  Institution  should  remain  as  a  permanent  thing, 
to  become  a  dominating  power,  but  only  to  be 
endured  as  an  evil,  at  some  time  to  cease ;  and, 
especially,  they  forgot  that  there  were  restless  spirits 
at  work,  the  world  over,  sweeping  away  all  institu 
tions,  and  wiping  out  all  lines  which  hindered  the 
human  race  in  the  pathway  cleared  for  it  by  that 
mighty  and  mysterious  power  which  men  call 
Progress. 

The  good  people  of  the  nether  side,  being  all  of 
one  accord  about  the  Institution,  made  the  further 
great  mistake  of  supposing  that  the  good  people  of 
the  upper  side,  except  the  obnoxious  Abolishers, 
were  so  busy,  tilling  their  acres,  sailing  their  ships, 
twirling  their  spindles,  building  their  houses,  sell 
ing  their  wares,  and  otherwise  getting  gain,  that 
they  would  be  quite  indifferent  about  the  matter, 
and  ready  to  submit  to  almost  any  sacrifice,  rather 
than  to  provoke  a  serious  disturbance  about  the 
Institution.  In  this  confidence  they  went  on,  wax 
ing  more  and  more  persistent  and  violent,  until 
they  openly  declared,  that  unless  they  could  be 
protected  in  all  their  rights  as  they  claimed  them, 
they  would  no  longer  remain  in  the  Sisterhood, 
but  would  go  out  from  it,  and  be  no  more  a  part 
of  it,  and  would  confederate  among  themselves  as 
a  separate  people,  so  as  by  all  means  to  save  the 
Instituticn — all  of  which  seemed  idle  threats  to  the 
good  people  of  the  upper  side. 

Meanwhile,  slowly  and  surely,  the  foundations 
had  been  laid  of  a  new  power,  strong  and  resolute 


60  DO  ME  STIC  US. 

to  maintain,  in  their  integrity,  the  ancient  landmarks 
the  Fathers  had  set,  and  to  resist,  by  all  means, 
within  the  compact,  the  baleful  forces  which  threat 
ened  to  destroy  the  unity  of  the  Sisterhood.  It 
gained  the  ascendant  at  the  very  crisis  of  the 
Nation's  fate.  In  the  person  of  its  chosen  leader,  it 
gave  a  new  name  to  the  roll  of  the  world's  martyrs 
and  emancipators.  It  knit  the  hearts  of  all  loyal 
Union-loving  men,  as  the  heart  of  one  man,  in  the 
long,  dark  struggle.  It  won  for  itself  the  right  to 
this  simple  word  of  praise,  that  as  the  faithful  servant 
of  the  Sisterhood,  it  saved — albeit  at  a  great  price — 
the  birthright  of  Freedom  which  no  mad  endeavor 
could  destroy. 


CHAPTER   VIII. 

THE    STRIFE   OF   THE    SISTERHOOD. 

AS  we  are  not  concerned  so  much  with  the  for 
tunes  of  the  Sisterhood,  as  with  those  of  one  of 
its  lowly  and  lovely  daughters,  it  is  needless  to  trace, 
in  detail,  the  story  of  this  discordant  time.  Suffice 
it  to  say,  that  the  outcome  of  the  discord  was  a  sea 
son  of  hideous  ruin  and  combustion  dire.  A  fire 
brand  from  the  upper  side  was  flung  into  the  nether 
side,  by  a  wild,  frenzied  onslaught,  within  its  bor 
ders  ;  the  lawless  outburst  of  a  handful  of  enthusiasts 
numbering  less  than  a  score  of  men,  under  a  leader 
whose  lifeless  body  soon  dangled  from  a  felon's 
gibbet,  in  expiation  of  his  crime,  but  whose  name, 
caught  up  and  resounded  on  a  million  lips,  became 
a  battle  cry,  the  like  of  which  was  never  heard  be 
fore  among  the  sons  of  men. 

Firebrands  from  the  nether  side  were  soon  flying, 
thick  and  fast  One  after  another,  the  sisters  below 
the  invisible  line  cast  off  the  compact,  and  declared 
themselves  quit  of  its  obligations.  At  last,  one 
April  morning,  where,  over  a  wave-washed  rampart, 
far  off  on  the  nether  side,  a  bit  of  bunting,  bearing 
a  star-sprinkled  patch  of  blue,  and  streaked  with 
alternate  stripes  of  white  and  red,  was  fluttering  in 

61 


52  DO  ME  STIC  US. 

the  early  breeze,  a  puff  of  white  smoke  rose  in  mid 
air,  landward,  and  a  cannon  shot  was  fired,  with 
deadly  aim,  upon  the  dingy,  wind-worn  symbol  of 
the  union  and  sovereignty  of  the  Sisterhood.  A 
single  shot,  but  its  sudden,  sharp  concussion  dis 
lodged  the  avalanche  of  War,  as,  in  the  high  Alps, 
the  chance  discharge  of  a  huntsman's  rifle  loosens 
the  long  suspended,  tottering  masses  of  snow  and 
ice,  and  hurls  them  down  the  mountain's  shattered 
side,  with  ruin  in  their  track. 

A  single  shot;  but  it  summoned  the  whole  Sis 
terhood  to  arms,  on  the  one  side  to  sever  it  in 
twain,  on  the  other  side  to  save  it  alive  in  its  unity. 
It  startled,  and  wakened  out  of  their  fancied  security, 
the  sleepers  and  dreamers  on  both  sides  of  the  in 
visible  line.  It  splintered,  and  shattered,  and  crushed 
out  of  shape,  old  expedients,  and  pretexts,  and  sub 
terfuges,  and  made  many  a  refuge  of  lies  as  unsafe 
a  shelter  as  a  tall  tree  in  a  thunder  storm.  It 
opened  a  clear,  wide  space,  through  which,  as  if  a 
rift  had  been  cut  into  the  heavens,  was  seen  in  a 
new  light,  what  was  true,  and  right,  and  needful,  to 
be  done  and  suffered,  and  in  which  it  was  revealed 
that,  on  both  sides  of  the  line,  men  were  made  of 
such  stuff  that  they  would  rather  die  than  submit 
to  what,  in  heart  and  conscience,  they  thought  was 
wrong. 

And  so  the  good  fight  to  save  the  Sisterhood 
began,  and  went  on,  drenching  the  fair  land  with 
blood,  filling  its  homes  with  mourning,  furrowing 
its  soil  with  the  graves  of  heroes,  but  welding,  in 


THE  STRIFE  OF  THE  SISTERHOOD.  63 

its  furnace  fires,  a  new  and  purer  Sovereignty,  to  be 
divided  no  more  by  separating  lines,  and  sullied  no 
longer  by  the  dark  stain  which  was  the  source  of 
all  the  baleful  strife. 

At  first,  it  was  intended  by  the  good  people  of 
the  upper  side  of  the  invisible  line  that  the  war 
which  they  never  thought  of  beginning,  but  at  last 
were  driven  to  undertake,  should  be  waged  wholly 
without  reference  to  the  question  of  Domesticus 
Africanus,  or  the  Institution.  The  Sisterhood  was 
to  be  saved  from  disruption  and  restored  with 
out  change.  The  cancer-eaten  body  was  to  be 
cured,  without  touching  the  cancer.  The  Ship  of 
State  was  to  be  got  safely  to  Tarshish  with  Jonah 
under  the  hatches.  The  Institution,  which  had 
made  all  the  mischief,  was  not  to  be  meddled  with. 
The  separating  sisters  were  to  be  constrained  at  the 
cannon's  mouth,  and  pressed  with  the  point  of  the 
bayonet,  to  come  back,  just  as  they  were,  before 
that  fateful  shot  was  fired.  This  was  the  wisdom  of 
the  wisest  who  waged  the  war,  and  they  undertook 
to  deal  with  Domesticus  Africanus  as  if  there  were, 
in  reality,  no  war,  and  as  if  all  the  slaughter,  on  both 
sides,  were  simply  to  settle  the  vexed  question 
whether  or  not  the  Sisterhood  could  be  broken  up, 
at  will,  by  any  of  the  separate  sisters. 

Accordingly  when,  under  cover  of  the  hubbub  of 
the  marching,  and  countermarching,  and  attack,  and 
invasion,  Domesticus  Africanus  came  straggling, 
now  and  then,  within  the  camp  lines  of  the  inva 
ders,  having  got  through  his  thick  skull  a  faint 


64 


DOMESTICUS. 


notion  that,  in  some  way,  he  was  concerned  in  the 
fight,  and  that  it  might  be  better  for  him  to  steal  away 
from  the  encircling  arms  of  the  Institution  than  to 
abide  where  he  was,  he  was  courteously  sent  back, 
by  the  invaders,  to  his  master  or  mistress,  by  order 
of  the  wise  men.  But  presently,  there  came  to  be 
a  foolishness  wiser  than  this  wisdom.  If  Domes- 
ticus  Africanus  was  property  on  the  nether  side  of 
the  line,  and  if  the  invaders  were  waging  a  real  war, 
and  were  actual  and  not  make  believe  belligerents, 
and  entitled  by  all  the  rules  of  war,  to  use  and  con 
fiscate  the  property  of  the  enemy,  why  was  not  Do- 
mesticus  Africanus,  when  found  within  the  invaders' 
lines,  lawful  prize,  as  contraband  of  war  ?  He  could 
not  be  reclaimed  by  his  former  owner,  under  the 
compact,  because  the  compact  was  broken  by  the 
owner  and  sought  to  be  utterly  destroyed,  and  as, 
in  the  eyes  of  the  invaders,  the  property  was  of  a 
description  that  belonged  to  itself,  he  came  to  a  kind 
of  intermediate  state,  between  being  a  thing  and 
being  a  person,  and,  for  the  time  being,  was  labelled 
"  Domesticus  Contrabandus." 

It  was  at  this  precise  point  that  our  good  Prince 
was  sorely  puzzled  and  perplexed.  In  common 
with  a  great  many  of  his  fellow  princes  of  the  Im 
perial  City,  he  had  clung  to  the  hope,  first,  that  the 
Sisterhood  could  be  saved  without  a  fight,  and  then, 
that  if  a  fight  were  inevitable,  it  could  go  on  without 
harming  the  Institution.  He  was  well  satisfied  with 
things  as  they  were.  He  had  lively  sympathies  with 
Netherdom.  A  tenth  cousin  of  his  maternal  grand- 


THE  STRIFE  OF  THE  SISTERHOOD.  £r 

father,  had  at  some  remote  period  of  time,  settled 
and  married  in  that  sunny  clime,  and  had  become  a 
participant  in  the  benefits  of  the  Institution.  Such  a 
tie,  however  slender  in  fact,  was  of  a  wonderful 
potency  in  sentiment  and  sympathy;  and  was  sup 
posed  to  create  a  kind  of  secret  pledge  and  hypoth 
ecation  of  the  opinion  and  conscience  of  the  most 
distant  collateral  connections  on  the  upper  side  of 
the  line,  by  way  of  security  for  the  inviolability  of 
the  Institution.  The  Prince  had  been  often  on  the 
nether  side,  and  had  been  entertained  there,  as  be 
came  his  princely  rank,  returning  home,  after  each 
successive  visit,  with  glowing  accounts  of  what  he 
had  seen  and  enjoyed. 

Most  of  his  experiences  had  been  prior  to  his  mar 
riage,  but  many  a  heartache  had  he  given  the  Little 
Lady,  all  unconsciously,  as  he  dilated  upon  the 
liberal  and  patriarchal  hospitalities  of  which  his 
memory  retained  a  vivid  impression,  and  to  which 
he  was  fond  of  recurring.  There,  Domesticus  was 
born  and  brought  up  in  the  bosom  of  the  Family, 
and  was  bound,  by  the  sacred  tie  of  property,  to  a 
life-long,  loyal  service.  The  Institution,  seen  from 
this  bright  side,  was  like  a  tree  of  life  in  the  midst 
of  a  garden.  It  made  possible,  in  reality,  what  he 
had  only  dreamed  of,  in  vision,  or  read  about  in 
romance.  Houses  wide  open ;  tables  spread  daily 
and  with  lavish  bounty,  for  troops  of  guests,  ex 
pected  or  unexpected;  viands  supplied  from  the 
abundant  resources  at  hand,  requiring  nothing 
exotic  to  add  to  their  excellence,  and  of  which,  in 
5 


66  DOMESTICUS. 

their  wonderful  preparation,  the  secrets  were  hered 
itary  and  were  part  of  the  traditions  of  a  family  and 
a  race ;  and  all  this  ruled  over  with  a  kind  of 
paternal  and  feudal  sway,  by  models  of  manly 
daring  and  womanly  grace,  undisturbed  by  the  fret 
ting  cares  of  petty  routine,  or  by  the  wearisome 
change  and  worrying  friction  of  the  life  at  home. 

"After  all,"  said  the  Princess,  when  the  Prince 
would  pause,  after  one  of  his  high-wrought  descrip 
tions,  "  no  wonder  they  can  be  hospitable,  when 
they  can  command  work  without  wages,  and  own 
the  people  who  do  it.  If  we  could  buy  and  sell 
Domesticus  as  we  pleased,  or  raise  him  and  grow 
him,  like  corn  and  cabbages,  we  could  be  just  as 
hospitable,  and  entertain  just  as  well,  possibly 
better,  than  they  do.  But  what  right  have  they  got 
to  own  Domesticus  Africanus  and  make  him  do 
their  work  for  nothing?" 

Then  the  Prince  would  explain  to  her  that  Do 
mesticus  Africanus  was  under  a  special,  old  time 
curse  and  ban,  which  bound  him,  and  his  posterity, 
to  fetch  and  carry  forever.  Also,  that  the  Institu 
tion  was  a  great  blessing  to  him  and  his  children, 
because  it  provided  them  with  homes,  and  food,  and 
raiment,  and  other  necessaries  of  life,  having  which 
they  ought  to  be  content. 

"I  can't  see,"  said  the  Princess,  "how  you  can 
make  out  a  thing  to  be  a  curse  and  a  blessing  at  the 
same  time,  or  when  it  stops  being  a  curse  and  be 
gins  being  a  blessing.  The  long  and  the  short  of 
it  is  that  they  get  the  work  and  give  no  pay.  A 


THE  STRIFE   OF  THE  SISTERHOOD.  ty 

great  many  of  the  emissaries  of  Domesticus,  here 
abouts,  may  be  under  a  curse — they  act  as  if  they 
were — plenty  of  them — but  nobody  kidnaps  them 
and  makes  them  work  for  nothing." 

"  What  can  these  good  people  do  ? "  said  the 
Prince.  "  They  have  got  Domesticus  Africanus  on 
their  hands  and  they  must  keep  him." 

"  That  doesn't  hinder  their  paying  him  and  letting 
him  feel  that  he  is  a  man." 

"  He  is  paid,  in  food,  and  clothing,  and  care." 

"  So  are  dogs,  and  horses,  and  oxen,  fed  and  cared 
for,  but  is  he  not  much  better  than  they  ?" 

Then  the  Prince  would  explain  that,  in  a  certain 
sense,  he  was,  and,  again,  in  a  certain  other  sense, 
he  was  not,  and  the  Princess  would  urge  that  he 
had  a  soul  as  well  as  a  body,  and  press  the  point, 
until  the  Prince  would  admit,  with  some  qualifica 
tions,  that  he  had  a  soul,  but  of  an  altogether  in 
ferior,  and  so  to  speak,  unmarketable  quality  and 
grade,  in  fact,  a  damaged  article,  the  whole  race 
bring  a  kind  of  job  lot,  very  far  below  the  average 
social  standard,  and  doomed  to  perpetual  degrada 
tion. 

" Of  course,"  she  would  say,  indignantly,  "if  it 
is  to  be  perpetually  degraded ;  but  it  does  seem  to 
me  against  nature,  and  against  right,  and  against 
conscience,  for  a  man  to  claim  to- own  another  man." 

This  always  led  the  Prince  to  say,  very  solemnly, 
that  there  were  a  great  many  excellent,  wise  and 
superior  men,  who  believed  in  the  Institution  and 
its  divine  character,  and  that  circumstances  altered 


68  DOMESTIC  US. 

cases,  in  the  matter  of  souls,  and  bodies,  and  races, 
as  well  as  in  respect  to  other  things,  and  that,  on 
the  whole,  Domesticus  Africanus  was  far  better  off 
as  he  was  than  if  he  were  roaming  about  in  his 
native  nakedness,  with  wild  beasts,  in  jungles  and 
forests,  and  that  the  meddlesome  Abolishers  were 
doing  infinite  mischief,  by  stirring  up  questions 
which  only  made  trouble,  and  that  they  were  un 
settling  the  foundations,  and  if  the  foundations  were 
destroyed  what  would  become  of  the  Merchant 
Princes  ? 

This  idea  of  danger  to  the  foundations  was  a 
source  of  constant  alarm  to  the  Prince  and  his 
fellows,  as  it  involved  the  undermining,  to  a  very 
large  extent,  of  the  whole  system  of  Dry  Goods, 
and  the  possible  loss  of  millions  of  uncounted 
sestertia.  War  was  the  very  last  thing  they  wanted 
and  even  when  they  found  themselves  enveloped 
in  its  murky  cloud,  and  saw  its  grim  shape,  stalking, 
like  a  fiend,  across  their  path,  they  were  still  con 
sulting  the  oracles,  and  inspecting  the  omens  and 
crying  "Peace,  peace,"  until,  in  the  midst  of  their 
vociferations  and  expostulations,  the  whirlwind  rose, 
and  the  storm  burst,  and  the  lightnings  flashed,  and 
the  floods  came,  and  the  foundations  were  swept 
away,  and  the  Institution  was  hurled,  as  by  an  aveng 
ing  Almighty  hand,  into  the  blackness  of  darkness 
forever. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

COMING  AND  GOING  OF  CONTRABANDUS. 

IT  was  before  this  final  and  blessed  consummation 
had  been  reached,  and  while  the  good  fight  was 
in  its  earlier  stages,  the  Prince,  in  his  wisdom,  being 
still  sorely  perplexed  with  the  problem  of  how  to 
save  the  Sisterhood,  without  hurting  the  Institution, 
and  Domesticus  Africanus,  in  his  unwisdom,  being 
more  sorely  perplexed  to  comprehend  his  anomalous 
predicament  of  being  neither  a  thing  nor  a  person, 
but  only  a  contraband  of  war,  that  a  new  and  sur 
prising  piece  of  information  was  communicated  to 
the  Little  Lady.  The  Prince,  one  evening,  with  an 
air  of  supreme  self  satisfaction,  announced  that  the 
home  problem  was  about  to  receive  a  partial,  if  not 
a  perfect  solution,  in  the  person  of  Domesticus 
Contrabandus,  whom  their  household  was  to  receive 
on  the  morrow. 

It  had  come  about  in  this  wise :  Domesticus 
Africanus,  was,  as  far  as  his  opportunities  permitted, 
on  the  move,  in  the  invaded  regions,  towards  the 
pickets  of  the  invaders.  From  all  that  was  going 
on  below  the  invisible  line,  he  appeared  to  be  draw 
ing  the  inference  that  he  could  become  a  person. 
This  inference  was  very  often  drawn  with  the  aid  of 

69 


70  DOMESTICUS. 

a  horse  and  cart,  which  being  the  property  of  his 
master  or  mistress,  was,  in  the  existing  state  of  war, 
equally  contraband  with  himself,  and  forfeited  to 
the  enemy  by  all  the  usages  of  contending  powers. 
So,  in  good  conscience,  and  as  an  act  of  authorized 
hostility,  he  would  pile  into  the  cart,  under  cover 
of  the  night,  all  his  contraband  belongings,  con 
sisting  of  his  wife,  and  children,  or  as  many  of  them 
as  had  not  been  sold  away  from  him,  and  such  other 
movables  as  were  within  convenient  reach,  and  de 
part  from  the  house  of  bondage,  without  stopping 
to  shake  off  the  dust  from  his  feet.  The  contra 
bands,  who  thus  flocked  into  the  lines  of  the  in 
vaders,  were  set  to  doing  camp  drudgery,  and  many 
of  them  were  disposed  of  in  such  manner  that  they 
could  begin,  at  once,  to  try  the  experiment  of  being 
persons,  on  their  own  account. 

In  the  course  of  such  dispositions,  a  brave  war 
rior,  commanding  in  the  ranks  of  the  invaders,  of 
kin  to  our  Prince,  consigned  to  him  the  particular 
specimen  of  the  new  genus  Contrabandus,  of  whose 
coming  the  Princess  was  apprised.  It  was  a  cheer 
ing  anticipation.  She  was  given  to  understand  that 
she  was  now  about  to  appreciate  the  blessings  of  the 
Institution,  without  becoming  a  sharer  in  its  crimes. 
She  would  have  the  skilled  and  trained  services  of 
Domesticus  Africanus,  with  the  privilege  of  paying 
him,  at  the  market  rate,  for  the  labor  he  performed. 
She  could  teach  him  to  read,  and  write,  and  cipher, 
and  think,  and  elevate  him,  as  high  as  she  pleased, 
in  the  scale  of  humanity.  The  Prince  was  delighted 


COMING  AND  GOING  OF  CONTRA  BAND  US.     j{ 

at  this  lucky  stroke,  in  which  philanthropy,  political 
economy,  and  social  progress  seemed  to  be  happily 
combined,  and  while  the  Princess  was  not  without 
some  secret  misgivings  as  to  the  result,  she  awaited, 
with  mingled  hope  and  apprehension,  the  coming 
of  the  Atlas  who  was  to  lift  the  load  from  her  weary 
shoulders. 

The  morrow  came,  and  with  it,  came  Contraban- 
dus.  Having  achieved  his  personal  freedom,  he 
considered  himself  equal  to  any  possible  emergency, 
and  took  immediate  possession  of  the  palace,  as  if 
coming  into  a  patrimony  of  which  he  was  the  right 
ful  heir.  Fresh  from  the  din  and  stir  of  contending 
armies,  and  the  excitement  of  camp  life,  his  general 
demeanor  was  that  of  a  belligerent,  ready  to  lead, 
or  follow,  in  any  forlorn  hope.  There  was  not  a 
ray  of  encouragement  for  the  Princess  in  any  of  the 
inky  lines  of  his  Ethiopic  face,  nor  a  redeeming 
touch  to  its  ugliness,  save  that  at  every  parting  of 
the  vastness  of  his  lips  he  disclosed  a  set  of  ivories 
which,  in  spite  of  her  horror  at  the  thought  of  own 
ing  a  fellow  being,  in  whole  or  in  part,  the  Princess 
wished  she  could  buy  and  reduce  to  immediate  pos 
session.  However,  if  she  could,  for  a  little  season, 
suspend  her  daily  anxiety  in  regard  to  the  depart 
ment  in  which  he  was  to  exercise  his  supposed  skill 
and  experience,  she  would  become  accustomed  to 
his  unsightly  aspect,  and  there  was  solid  comfort  in 
his  teeth. 

The  Prince,  who  believed  with  Macbeth  that  "the 
sauce  to  meat  is  ceremony,"  deemed  himself  fortu- 


^  2  DO  ME  STIC  US. 

nate  in  being  able  to  signalize  the  inauguration  of 
the  new  era  in  his  household  administration  by  the 
presence,  at  his  board,  of  a  select  company,  who 
would  be  made  doubly  at  their  ease  by  the  minis 
trations  of  Contrabandus.  He  came  home,  a  little 
in  advance  of  his  expected  guests,  and  as  he  entered 
his  palace,  now  in  the  safe  custody  of  the  newly  in 
stalled  Major-domo,  his  sense  of  smell  was  saluted 
by  an  all-pervading  odor  which  he  instantly  asso 
ciated  with  the  means  by  which  the  houses  of  the 
Imperial  City  were  illuminated  at  night.  It  was  in 
the  grand  hall,  on  the  staircase,  and  in  full  posses 
sion  of  the  mansion,  though,  as  yet,  unperceived  by 
the  Princess,  who  was  enveloped  in  the  mysteries  of 
her  toilette.  The  Prince  raised  the  hue  and  cry, 
customary  with  householders  in  such  cases  of  escape, 
but  after  long  search,  no  unclosed  outlet  was  dis 
covered. 

Suddenly,  a  suspicion  crossed  the  mind  of  the 
Prince. 

"  Where  is  Contrabandus  ?  " 

He  was  found  by  the  Prince,  who  on  receiving 
an  intimation  as  to  his  probable  whereabouts,  went 
in  swift  search  of  him,  in  the  outer  court,  at  the  rear 
of  the  palace,  engaged  in  the  act  of  dealing  tremen 
dous  blows  upon  the  side  of  a  barrel  which  he  was 
vainly  endeavoring  to  open  by  splitting  it  in  the 
centre,  as  if  it  were  an  immense  section  of  a  felled 
tree. 

"  What  are  you  about  ?  "  asked  the  Prince. 

"  Performin'  on  dish  yer  bar'l "  replied   Contra- 


COMING  AND  GOING  OF  CONTKABANDUS.      73 

bandus,  resting  from  his  labors  and  displaying  his 
ivories. 

"  Leave  the  barrel  alone  and  answer  me  this  ques 
tion — did  you  put  out  the  light  in  the  cellarium  ?  " 

"  Yes,  massa,  blowed  her  out  clean — had  to  blow 
bustin'  hard,  but  blowed  her  out — never  performed 
on  a  light  like  dat  afore." 

The  Prince  recalled  a  tradition  that,  when  a 
noted  hero  of  the  nether  side  of  the  line,  a  master 
of  the  arts  of  eloquence,  a  leader  of  the  Senate  of 
Magna  Patria,  and  once  a  candidate  for  her  highest 
civic  honor,  made  his  first  visit  to  the  Imperial  City, 
he  was  reported  to  have  nearly  lost  his  life  by 
asphyxia,  induced  by  his  "  performing,"  in  the  same 
way,  upon  the  aerial  light  in  his  apartment,  while 
spending  the  night  in  the  mansion  of  a  friend.  Held 
in  check,  by  this  memory,  from  seizing  the  hatchet 
and  decapitating  Contrabandus  on  the  spot,  he  good 
naturedly  conducted  him  to  the  subterranean  place 
of  his  offence,  and  gave  him  an  object  lesson  in  the 
science  of  Illumination. 

To  complete  this  special  course  of  instruction, 
he  then  took  him  to  the  banqueting  hall,  to  initiate 
him,  at  once,  into  the  higher  branches  of  the  art. 
With  his  own  princely  hand  he  lighted  the  tiny 
instrument  of  ignition,  by  a  slight  friction  of  its 
inflammable  point  on  the  rough  surface  of  the  recep 
tacle  from  which  he  took  it,  and  then  went  through 
the  equally  familiar  process  of  illuminating,  with  its 
aid,  some  of  the  light-diffusing  jets,  pendent  over  the 
table,  already  decorated  for  the  coming  repast.  Con- 


74  DOMESTICUS. 

trabandus  obeyed  the  injunction  to  follow  the  pro 
cess  at  every  advancing  step,  in  order  to  its  imme 
diate  imitation,  testifying  his  admiration  in  a  series 
of  exclamations,  in  a  loud  key,  as  if  intended  to  at 
tract  the  attention  of  distant  spectators  in  the  outer 
air. 

"  Stop  that  shouting,  Contrabandus,"  said  the 
Prince.  "  Now  take  the  box  and  light  that  wall 
bracket  yourself." 

Contrabandus  seized,  not  only  the  proffered  box, 
but  also  the  half  consumed  stump,  which  the  Prince 
still  held  in  his  hand,  and  with  a  frantic  gesture, 
described,  with  its  sooty  point,  a  long  line  of  black, 
across  the  pearl-tinted  panel  from  which  the  bracket 
projected. 

"  Reckon  dish  yer  lucifer  is  w'at  you  teched  off 
afore,  Massa,"  said  Contrabandus,  reckless  of  the 
damage  he  had  done,  but  with  genuine  surprise  at 
the  failure  of  his  experiment,  and  its  result  in  evok 
ing  darkness  instead  of  light. 

The  Prince  stood  aghast.  He  surveyed  Contra 
bandus  from  head  to  foot.  There  were  divisions  of 
labor  on  the  lower  side  of  the  line,  as  well  defined 
and  thoroughly  regulated  as  in  the  realms  of  hired 
service.  To  what  had  he  been  born  and  bred  ? 

"  Contrabandus,"  said  the  Prince,  in  his  most 
princely  tone,  "  have  you  ever  waited  at  table  ?  " 

"  Reckon  I  has,  Massa — on  forty  to  wunst — O  go 
'long  'bout  waitin' — clar'd  de  track  dat  time  and 
got  de  dishes  in  'head  of  everybody." 

This  was  literally  true.     Once  in  his  life,  and  but 


COMING  AND  GOING  OF  CONTRABAXDUS.      75 

once,  had  Contrabandus  waited  at  table,  and  on 
forty  guests.  It  was  at  a  barbecue,  in  a  pine  grove; 
for  Contrabandus  was  a  field  hand,  and  conversant 
with  cattle  from  his  youth. 

The  Prince  had  to  dress  for  dinner  and  he  could 
not  linger.  Heavy  of  heart,  and  with  dire  forebod 
ings,  he  turned  to  leave  the  room,  but  tarried  an 
instant  for  a  query  too  important  to  omit. 

"  Is  the  Falernian  in  the  ice  ?  " 

"  Oh,  yes,  Massa — out  of  all  dose  yer  long-necked 
flagons.  De  Missus  she  told  me  to  put  it  in  ice 
and  Fse  got  it  all  out — had  to  chop  off  de  necks 
— reckon  dey  got  twisted  up  somehow  with  wires 
— chopped  'em  clean  off  wid  de  hatchet,  and  dey 
kinder  flew  like,  but  cotched  de  most  of  it  and  no 
glass  in  de  tub." 

"  Tub  !  "  echoed  the  Prince  in  dismay. 

"  Yes,  Massa,  all  out  in  one  tub — de  teetotal 
dozen  and  chunks  of  ice  to  boot — all  ready  for 
dippin'  out." 

The  Prince  gave  one  long  deep  groan  and  van 
ished.  It  was  not  that  the  whole  case  of  extra  dry 
Falernian,  which  he  had  sent  home  for  judicious 
testing,  by  expert  palates,  had  been  sacked  and  ex 
terminated  by  the  rude  hand  of  Contrabandus,  in 
stead  of  the  proper  preparation  of  a  couple  of  flagons, 
as  he  had  specially  directed,  and  as  the  Princess  had 
duly  commanded ;  it  was  the  dire  conviction  of  the 
ignominious  failure  in  which  he  was  involved,  that 
made  his  disgust  too  deep  for  words. 

He  met  the   Little   Lady  descending  the  stair- 


76 


DOMESTICUS. 


case,  but  rushed  past  without  a  kiss,  a  word,  or  a 
glance. 

She  knew,  only  too  well,  what  was  before  her. 
At  an  early  hour  in  the  day  she  had  discovered  that 
Contrabandus,  so  far  from  being  the  solution  of  a 
problem,  was,  on  the  contrary,  himself  as  insoluble 
a  problem  as  she  had  ever  encountered.  He  had 
seated  himself  comfortably  in  an  easy  chair,  in  the 
most  attractive  spot  available  for  his  selection,  and 
when  she  descended  to  make  her  daily  round  of  in 
spection,  he  was  regaling  himself  with  a  pipe,  and 
recounting,  to  an  interested  group  of  listeners,  gath 
ered  from  the  various  departments  of  household  ser 
vice,  temporarily  abandoned,  his  varied  perils  by 
field  and  flood,  in  the  transition  from  bondage  to 
freedom.  The  Little  Lady  dispersed  the  audience, 
confiscated  the  pipe,  and  ordered  Contrabandus  up 
stairs,  where,  on  a  subsequent  examination,  his  dense 
ignorance  and  absolute  barbaric  awkwardness  were 
disclosed.  Still,  she  had  heard  of  the  aptitude  of 
his  race  to  receive  instruction,  and  of  the  rapidity 
with  which  he  was  supposed  to  be  rushing  into  the 
ranks  of  intellectual  progress,  at  the  call  of  philan 
thropy,  and  she  thought  she  would  try  her  practiced 
hand  upon  him  in  the  sphere  of  duty  to  which  he 
had  been  summoned.  And  this  she  would  do  thor 
oughly,  for  the  Prince's  sake,  as  well  as  for  the  good 
of  Contrabandus. 

The  cloth  was  thereupon  spread  and  the  table 
set,  under  the  Little  Lady's  immediate  direction, 
and,  in  the  main,  by  her  own  hands ;  she  then 


COMING  AND  GOING  OF  CONTRAKA.\Dl'S. 


77 


.seated  herself  at  its  head,  and  in  dumb  show,  and 
according  to  the  guidance  of  her  voice,  and  eye,  and 
gesture,  caused  Contrabandus  to  perform  in  her 
presence.  He  was  not  only  a  willing,  but  a  wildly 
active  scholar,  evidently  thinking  it  great  fun  and 
engaging  in  the  novel  occupation  as  if  it  were  a 
new  variety  of  field  sport  lie  plunged  to  and  fro, 
thrusting  before  the  Princess  the  empty  tureen,  dis 
tributing  plates  of  imaginary  soup,  whirling,  in 
mid-air,  platters  of  supposititious  fish,  make-believe 
meats,  and  other  fictitious  viands,  through  all  the 
courses  of  the  meal,  and  making  confusion  worse 
confounded  with  his  inevitable  and  fatal  blunders. 
In  vain  did  the  Princess  seek  to  make  him  revolve 
about  her  in  his  proper  orbit.  Twenty  times,  during 
this  pantomimic  rehearsal,  was  a  scene  like  this 
enacted.  Enter  Contrabandus,  on  full  jump,  with  an 
empty  dish.  Princess,  with  a  deprecatory  gesture, 
waves  him  back.  Contrabandus,  in  the  effort  to 
stop,  pitches  forward.  Princess  shrieks,  menacing 
him  with  uplifted  forefinger.  Contrabandus  disap 
pears,  and  re-enters.  Princess  encourages  him  with 
a  beckoning  motion  of  her  hand.  Contrabandus 
ducks  his  head,  gathers  force  for  a  rapid  forward 
movement,  and  projects  the  dish  as  if  bent  on  bowl 
ing  down  everything  on  the  table.  Princess,  with 
open  palm,  warns  him  off".  Contrabandus  misin 
terprets  the  gesture  as  a  signal  for  instant  dispatch, 
and  delivers  the  dish  on  the  middle  of  the  table  with 
a  bang  which  sets  everything  ringing.  Princess,  with 
savage  glance,  threatens  him  with  annihilation.  Exit 


^8  DOMESTICUS. 

Contrabandus,  as  if  his  old  master  were  after  him, 
with  a  shot-gun  and  a  brace  of  blood-hounds. 

The  pantomimic  dinner  bore  no  comparison  in 
its  tragi-comic  situations  to  the  real  dinner.  Some 
time  before  it  was  served,  Contrabandus,  who  had 
made  discovery  of  a  bell,  the  use  of  which  was  strictly 
prohibited,  except  in  cases  of  extreme  emergency, 
employed  himself  in  ringing  it  for  an  indefinite 
time — which,  to  the  agonized  ears  of  the  Prince 
and  Princess  and  the  startled  ears  of  their  guests, 
seemed  much  longer  than  it  really  was — under  the 
apparent  supposition  that  all  the  field  hands  were 
to  be  got  in.  When  the  company  were  seated, 
the  Little  Lady  soon  discovered  that  he  had  not 
retained  the  first  faint  remembrance  of  the  morning 
lesson.  Whatever  instinct  served  him  in  stead  of 
memory,  had  taken  him  back  to  the  barbecue  and 
the  pine  grove,  and  the  semi-barbaric  antics  and 
revelry  of  that  festal  scene. 

How  the  earlier  stages  of  the  dinner  were  accom 
plished,  in  the  wild  disorganization  which  reigned 
supreme,  under  which  the  well  trained,  assisting 
damsel  succumbed,  in  helpless  bewilderment,  in  a 
corner  of  the  neighboring  pantry,  and  the  Princess 
kept  her  seat,  only  because  she  knew  that  in  every 
case  of  a  runaway  it  was  safer  to  sit  still  than  to 
jump  out,  neither  host,  hostess  nor  guests  could 
afterwards  describe.  The  performances  of  Contra 
bandus  were  like  the  cyclone,  which  does  its  de 
structive  work  with  a  suddenness  that  so  obliterates 
the  consciousness  of  those  whom  it  buries  alive 


COMING  AXn   (,OIXC,    OF  CONTRAHAXDUS.      79 

under  the  crash  of  universal  ruin,  that  when  rescued 
they  cannot  tell  the  tale,  either  of  the  shock  or  of 
the  succor. 

The  inevitable  crisis  came  at  last.  Among  the 
oft-repeated  injunctions  of  the  Princess,  at  the  morn 
ing  rehearsal,  was  one  which  instructed  Contra- 
bandus,  at  a  certain  stage  of  the  dinner,  and  before 
its  final  courses,  to  remove  the  ample  napkin  which 
was  invariably  spread  over  the  table  cloth,  in  front 
of  the  Prince,  who  was  fond  of  carving,  and  preferred 
the  ancient  order  to  the  more  recent  fashion,  which 
threatens  to  make  carving  a  lost  art  among  gentle 
folk. 

When  the  point  of  time  was  reached  at  which  this 
mandate  should  have  been  executed,  the  Princess,  in 
a  wild  effort  to  bring  some  trace  of  order  out  of 
chaos,  whispered  to  Contraband  us,  as  he  shot  past 
her,  the  single  word  "  napkin."  He  took  up,  on  the 
instant,  a  confused  recollection  of  the  reiterated  com 
mand  of  the  morning.  The  word  rang  in  his  ear  like 
the  note  of  a  bugle,  sounding  a  charge.  The  duty 
of  the  moment  came  to  him  like  a  sudden  inspira 
tion.  It  was  to  capture  the  nearest  napkin  and 
remove  it  out  of  sight.  The  guest  at  the  post  of 
honor,  at  the  right  hand  of  the  Princess,  was  at 
once  the  object  of  a  strategic  movement  on  his  left 
flank.  The  snow-white  napkin,  which  lay,  in  ample 
folds,  across  his  portly  person,  in  the  peaceful  dis 
charge  of  its  inanimate,  protective  duty,  was  furtively 
seized  by  Contrabandus,  and  snatched  away. 

Now  there  is  nothing  which  a  well-regulated  and 


g0  DOMESTICUS. 

veteran  diner-out  would  be  less  likely  to  anticipate, 
or  more  likely  to  resent,  than  an  effort  to  deprive 
him,  of  his  napkin,  by  force,  in  the  middle  of  a 
dinner,  and  at  the  table  of  a  friend.  It  is  not  to  be 
wondered  at  that  the  guest  at  the  right  hand  of 
the  Princess,  thus  suddenly  surprised  and  attacked, 
by  a  natural  impulse  and  by  a  counter  movement, 
in  the  nick  of  time,  grasped  the  rapidly  disappear 
ing  napkin,  at  the  imminent  risk  of  losing  his 
balance  and  getting,  prematurely,  under  the  table. 
Contrabandus  was  checked  in  full  career — but  only 
checked — and  the  struggle  between  the  combatants 
became  most  exciting.  Each  clinging,  with  convul 
sive  clutch,  to  the  several  ends  of  the  napkin,  its 
broad,  snowy  band  tightly  drawn  between  them, 
they  looked  like  the  famous  Siamese  Twins,  save 
that  what  resembled  their  bond  of  union,  was,  in 
this  instance,  a  sign  of  discord.  Contrabandus, 
loyal  to  his  mistress,  and  burning  with  the  zeal  of  a 
new  convert  to  free  labor,  was  bent  on  "  havin'  dish 
yer  towel,  any  how,"  while  the  victim  of  his  assault, 
being  of  heavy  weight  and  somewhat  combative  in 
disposition,  was  disposed  to  settle  the  question,  at 
once  and  forever,  of  the  inalienable  rights  of  a  bona- 
fide  napkin  holder.  It  was  literally  the  tug  of  war. 
But  on  which  end  of  the  napkin  victory  would 
finally  have  perched,  the  Muse  of  History  can 
never  sing,  for  the  Prince,  at  the  moment  his  eye 
took  in  the  unprecedented  situation,  with  a  voice  of 
thunder,  demanded  unconditional  and  instant  sur 
render  on  the  part  of  Contrabandus,  who  was  sum- 


COMIXC,  AXD  GOING  OF  CONTRABANDUS.      8l 

marily  banished  from  the  banqueting  hall  in  dis 
grace,  to  wonder,  in  his  exile,  why  he  should  have 
been  cashiered,  on  the  eve  of  a  brilliant  success. 

Order  having  been  restored  and  the  rights  of 
hospitality  vindicated,  the  Prince  told  his  guests  the 
whole  story  of  Contrabandus,  lucifers,  Falernian 
and  all,  and  the  Princess  supplemented  it  by  re 
counting,  and,  in  part,  repeating  the  pantomimic 
experiences  of  the  Barmecide  feast  of  the  morning, 
so  that  a  merrier  ending  of  a  meal  was  hardly  ever 
known  within  the  palace  walls. 

The  next  day,  Contrabandus,  having  made  the 
timely  discovery,  "  his  own  self,"  that  the  "perform 
ances  "  on  the  upper  side  of  the  invisible  line  were 
"  teetotal ly  contrairey  to  what  day  is  "  on  the 
nether  side,  was  relieved  from  further  indoor  duty 
and  sent  off,  with  well-lined  pocket  and  good 
credentials  for  open  air  service,  to  an  interior  and 
strictly  rural  district,  where  there  are  no  risks  of 
illumination ;  where  the  juice  of  the  apple,  and  not 
the  foaming  grape  of  the  Falemian  vine  is  the 
favorite  beverage;  and  where  napkins  are,  as  yet, 
unknown. 
6 


CHAPTER  X. 

A   MALADROIT    PRINCE. 

IT  must,  in  all  candor,  be  admitted  that  the  Prince 
was  not  as  wise,  or  as  considerate,  in  respect  to 
matters  in  which  dealings  with  Domesticus  were  con 
cerned,  as  he  was,  or  was  supposed  to  be,  in  the  man 
agement  of  his  own  external  affairs.  He  chafed  and 
made  himself  uncomfortable  over  many  things 
which  the  Princess  easily  schooled  herself  to  endure. 
What  specially  exasperated  him,  and  created  un 
ceasing  irritation,  which  the  lapse  of  time  failed  to 
allay,  were  the  poisoning  propensities  of  Domes 
ticus. 

The  historic  poisoner,  the  poisoner  of  the  drama 
and  of  the  romance,  worked  in  secret  and  did 
his  deadly  work  by  stealth,  but  the  poisons  of 
Domesticus  were  dispensed  in  the  light  of  day 
and  greedily  consumed  by  innumerable  victims, 
with  their  eyes  as  well  as  their  mouths  wide  open. 
He  poisoned  at  the  fountain-head.  His  dealings 
with  the  great  staple  of  human  sustenance,  of 
which  the  staff  of  life  is  fashioned,  by  subjecting 
it  to  the  action  of  chemical  compounds,  out  of  sheer 
malice,  and  so  contrived  as  to  secure  the  corrosion 
of  all  the  stomachs  of  all  the  free  and  enlight- 
82 


A  MALADROIT  l'KL\ '( 7:.  g^ 

ened  inhabitants  of  Magna  Patria,  was,  with  the 
Prince,  a  constant  source  of  wrath  and  objurgation. 
It  vexed  his  soul  that  the  prayer  for  daily  bread 
should  be  answered  in  the  mixtures  of  tartaric  acid, 
potassia,  and  chloride  of  sodium,  which,  under 
various  disguises  and  aliases,  had  come  to  be  sub 
stituted  for  the  leaven  of  earlier  and  better  days;  all 
in  the  interest  of  lie-a-bed  and  lazy  emissaries  of 
Domestic  us,  who  set  aside  the  revered  processes 
of  fermentation,  and  discarded  the  time-honored 
yeast-cake,  the  delight  of  the  old  brigade  of  bread- 
makers. 

The  presence,  at  the  morning  meal,  of  a  well- 
heaped  pile  of  products  of  the  oven,  hastily  com 
pounded  with  the  aid  of  the  last  patented  prep 
aration  with  which  the  evil  genius  of  Chemistry  had 
cursed  the  finest  of  the  wheat,  was  like  a  red  rag 
to  a  bull.  The  Prince  had  an  aversion  to  being- 

o 

poisoned,  and  he  carried  it  so  far  as  to  object  to  the 
poisoning  of  his  wife  and  children.  These  prepara 
tions,  he  would  declare,  were  poison,  slow  but  sure. 
All  the  toothless  gums,  all  the  sallow  faces,  all  the 
spoiled  complexions,  all  the  miserable  dyspeptics, 
throughout  the  length  and  breadth  of  Magna  Patria, 
were  largely  due  to  this  diabolism,  of  which  the 
cream  of  Tartarus  and  the  substance  held  in  solution 
by  the  Dead  Sea  were  fitting  elements  and  ingre 
dients. 

He  waged  war  against  the  deadly  and  insidious 
compounds,  in  all  their  forms;  he  denounced  their 
inventors,  manufacturers,  and  venders,  as  enemies  of 


84 


DO  ME  STIC  US. 


the  human  race,  no  matter  under  cover  of  how  many 
copyrights,  trade-marks,  medals,  or  medical  analyses, 
they  plied  their  pernicious  arts.  Time  and  again, 
he  prohibited  the  use  of  their  wares  and  forbade 
their  introduction  into  the  palace,  but  his  interdicts 
were  all  in  vain ;  Domesticus  was  the  sworn  ally  of 
these  destroyers,  who,  while  carrying  on  a  perpetual, 
internecine  war  against  each  other,  were  leagued,  in 
common  cause,  against  the  entire  community,  and 
so  the  fatal  mixtures,  smuggled  into  every  prohib 
ited  place,  were  thrust  upon  the  Prince,  in  spite  of 
his  teeth,  and  between  his  teeth.  To  no  purpose 
did  he  threaten,  and  proscribe,  and  issue  his  search 
warrants.  He  was  as  powerless  as  an  exciseman 
on  an  Irish  coast.  The  prohibited  article  could  not 
be  found  on  any  part  of  the  premises,  in  cup,  or  can, 
or  parcel ;  nobody  ever  bought  it,  or  brought  it,  or 
saw  it,  and  yet  there  it  was,  in  inexhaustible  supply, 
the  bane  of  every  breakfast,  like  the  death  in  the 
prophet's  pot,  with  no  miraculous  healing  touch  of 
Nature  at  hand,  to  counteract  the  malignant  evil, 
and  supply  its  antidote.  So,  like  Socrates  when  he 
drank  the  hemlock,  the  Prince  had  to  convey  the 
poison  to  his  own  lips,  not  with  the  serenity  of  Soc 
rates,  but  with  dire  imprecations  upon  Domesticus, 
who,  all  unseen,  laughed  in  the  sleeve  in  which  the 
death-drug  had  been  slyly  and  secretly  conveyed 
into  the  palace. 

The  Princess  thought  it  unreasonable  that  such 
a  fuss  should  be  made  over  what  seemed  to  her  a 
fixed  result  in  the  course  of  the  progress  of  civil- 


A  MALADROIT  PRINCE.  85 

ization,  which  was  bringing  science  to  the  aid  of  the 
culinary  art  as  well  as  of  all  other  arts.  After  all, 
she  would  tell  the  Prince,  when — after  unsuspect 
ingly  biting  through  a  lump  of  the  saline  abom 
ination — he  would  break  out  into  incipient  impre 
cations,  it  was  a  question  of  skill  in  the  use ;  gun 
powder  and  dynamite  might  be  awkwardly  handled, 
but  they  were  no  less  valuable  means  to  the  ends 
for  which  they  were  adapted.  The  Prince  would 
rejoin,  with  his  teeth  on  edge,  that  the  people  who 
were  careless  in  handling  these  dangerous  sub 
stances  generally  had  the  evil  effects  visited  sum 
marily,  and  directly,  upon  themselves,  while  the 
agents  of  Domesticus  took  good  care  to  point  their 
destructive  weapons  away  from  their  own  persons. 

The  Prince,  finding  at  last  that  he  was  wholly 
powerless  to  carry  his  point,  was  forced  to  content 
himself  with  making  every  one  as  uncomfortable  as 
he  could,  whenever  the  presence  of  the  contraband 
compounds  was  detected  on  the  family  board.  He 
talked  about  the  "  turnpike  "  which  he  insisted  was 
what  his  grandmother  used  for  the  raising  of  flour, 
and  which  was  something  whereof  the  Little  Lady 
had  never  heard,  although  her  education  had  been 
sufficiently  thorough  for  any  well  conditioned  Prin 
cess. 

She  thought  it  hard  that  he  should  expect  the 
old  time  and  barbarous  methods  of  his  ancestors 
to  be  perpetuated  in  modern  palaces,  and  as  for 
his  fancied  "  turnpike," — whatever  fermenting  or 
permeating  mixture  that  may  have  been, — she  did 


86  DOMESTICUS. 

not  believe  in  its  existence,  and  the  word  was  in  no 
standard  dictionary,  with  a  definition  justifying  his 
statement.  Then  the  Prince  would  revert  to  the 
scenes  of  his  boyhood,  and  describe  the  long  array 
of  turnpike  cakes,  carefully  compounded,  according 
to  the  art  and  mystery  of  breadmakers,  and  being 
the  true  leaven,  ranged  in  due  order,  in  the  sunniest 
exposure,  to  bring  into  service  the  direct  solar  rays 
in  aid  of  the  perfect  work  they  were  to  accomplish 
— the  transformation  of  the  brayed  wheat  into  the 
wheaten  bread. 

The  Princess  could  easily  discard  these  reminis 
cences,  as  either  too  purely  fanciful,  or  too  wholly 
irrelevant  in  view  of  their  antiquity,  and  she  had 
too  much  good  sense  to  attempt  to  turn  back  the 
stream  of  Time  in  the  interest  of  any  particular 
method  of  making  biscuits.  But  while  this  subject 
was  disposed  of  without  difficulty,  there  was 
another,  on  which  the  Prince  would  frequently 
dilate,  which  could  not  be  so  summarily  dismissed. 
This  was  the  ancestral  apple  pie.  The  fondest 
memories  of  the  Prince  for  his  grandmother  seemed 
to  cluster  around  this  pie.  He  was  never  tired  of 
talking  about  it,  describing  it,  and  instituting  invidious 
comparisons  between  itand  the  spurious  article  which 
Domesticus  insisted  on  palming  off  upon  him,  in 
its  stead.  The  genuine  grandmother's  apple  pie 
differed  from  the  spurious  apple  pie  of  Domesticus, 
in  several  cardinal  points.  In  the  first  place,  it  had 
apple  in  it.  Secondly,  there  was  no  lemon  in  it. 
Thirdly,  it  had  no  bottom  crust.  Fourthly,  it  was 


A  MALADROIT  PRINCE.  gpr 

not  surmounted  with  any  foreign  or  new-fangled 
ornamentations,  in  lieu  of  the  old-fashioned  and 
honest  top  crust.  Fifthly,  and  lastly,  one  could  eat 
the  whole  of  it  and  be  never  the  worse. 

Vainly  had  the  Princess  striven  to  have  this  ideal 
apple  pie  reproduced.  Domesticus  grudged  our 
poor  Prince  any  such  souvenir  of  the  Past  as  a  solace 
for  the  Present.  Apple  pie  he  could  have,  but  only  of 
such  sort  as  to  awaken  feelings  kindred  to  those  of 
Tantalus,  when  the  swift  stream  flowed  past  his  lips 
but  just  beyond  their  touch.  Domesticus  would 
never  give  up  the  bottom  crust.  He  held  on  to  it  as 
if  it  were  a  kind  of  under-lying  security  for  his  wages. 
He  would  never  dispense  with  the  lemon.  It  was,  to 
him,  like  the  mixture  of  a  lie,  which,  Lord  Bacon 
says,  doth  ever  please.  He  clung  to  the  top  deco 
ration  as  tenaciously  as  an  elderly  flirt  to  a  false 
front.  As  for  increasing  the  quantity  of  apple,  it 
was  an  insult  to  suggest  it.  Nature  made  the 
apple,  but  he  was  to  make  the  pie,  and  his  rule  was 
the  minimum  of  apple  to  the  maximum  of  paste, 
so  that  the  Little  Lady,  after  many  expostulations, 
entreaties,  and  commands,  and  some  unsuccessful 
experimenting,  had  abandoned  the  effort  to  revive 
for  the  Prince  this  lost  delight  of  his  youth.  She 
could  not  silence  his  regrets  nor  satisfy  his  wonder- 
ings,  why,  when  everything  else  that  was  antique 
was  being  revived,  the  grandmother's  apple  pie 
could  not  be  included  in  the  revival;  and  in  her 
despair,  she  was  tempted  to  wish  that  the  Prince 
had  never  had  any  grandmother,  until  she  came  to 


88  DOMESTIC  US. 

reflect,  that  in  such  case,  there  would  never  have 
been  any  Prince. 

Besides  these  instances  of  maladroitness,  the 
Prince  would,  sometimes,  so  far  forget  himself  as  to 
venture  untimely  allusions  to  the  supposed  superior 
good  fortune  of  other  families,  in  their  experience 
with  Domesticus.  In  such  and  such  a  palace  of  a 
friendly  prince  there  might  be  found  the  accredited 
representatives  of  Domesticus,  who  had  remained 
under  the  roof  for  two  or  three  consecutive  decades; 
who  were  happy  and  who  diffused  happiness. 
There,  the  same  familiar  faces  which  had  greeted 
the  Prince  in  his  younger  days,  at  the  open  portal, 
still  yielded  him  the  accustomed  welcome,  now  that 
his  visits  were  rarer,  and  a  new  generation  had 
intervened.  Or,  he  would  describe  how  at  some 
repast  served  upon  an  antique  table,  with  carved, 
claw-footed  legs,  spread  with  heir-looms  in  glass, 
and  china,  and  silver,  there  would  hover  about 
the  board  some  old  ministering  genius,  dark  and 
polished  as  the  table-top  itself,  and  held  in  high 
esteem  as  a  relic  of  the  ancient  days  to  which  all 
these  souvenirs  belonged. 

How  these  better  fortunes  came  to  their  possessors 
the  Princess  could  not  divine,  but  she  was  unable  to 
rid  herself  of  a  feeling  that  their  contemplation  was 
a  source  of  unavailing  regret  to  the  Prince.  It 
seemed,  to  her  sensitive  nature,  a  kind  of  treason 
against  the  sovereignty  of  home,  a  sacrilege  against 
the  household  gods,  for  a  pater-familias  to  acknowl 
edge  that  anything,  under  a  stranger's  roof-tree,  was 


A  MALADROIT  PKINCE.  89 

superior  to  what  he  could  find  under  his  own.  If 
he  were  forced  to  the  consciousness  of  inferiority 
and  tempted  to  its  avowal,  it  was  a  condemnation  of 
the  incapacity  which  permitted  it,  and  which  must 
be  repented  of  in  sack-cloth  and  ashes. 

The  efforts  of  the  Prince  to  disabuse  her  mind  of 
these  wrong  impressions  were  not  apt  to  be  success 
ful.  He  was  himself,  not  infrequently,  in  a  state  of 
exasperation  against  Domesticus,  induced  not  only 
by  his  special  devices,  but  by  his  general  and  con 
tinuous  violation  of  all  the  laws  of  trade. 

To  pay  the  highest  price  for  the  best  service, 
to  give  the  most  for  skilled  labor,  was  right  and 
well  enough,  but  to  pay  these  prices  and  to  get, 
in  return,  the  poorest  service,  and  the  densest 
ignorance,  was  to  be  made  the  victim  of  intol 
erable  imposition.  When  the  carefully  selected  joint 
appeared  before  the  Prince,  in  a  state  of  readiness 
for  the  plate  and  the  palate,  only  a  little  advanced 
beyond  that  in  which  it  had  been  sold  in  the 
shambles,  and  a  whole  company  must  needs  wait, 
with  unappeased  appetite,  until  it  had  been  gashed 
into  bits  and  sent  below  stairs,  to  undergo  a  sup 
plementary  culinary  process,  to  fit  it  for  mastication, 
there  were  no  limits  to  the  punishments  he  would 
devise  against  the  perpetrator  of  such  a  crime.  It 
was  fraud  and  falsehood  for  any  one  to  make 
pretensions  which  resulted  in  such  flagrant  fail 
ure.  It  involved  deliberate  deception  and  dis 
honesty,  because  it  was  proof  positive  that  all  the 
declarations  and  representations  of  capacity  were 


QO  DOMESTICUS. 

false.  In  any  other  department  of  dealings,  be 
tween  man  and  man,  such  crimes  would  send  the 
criminal  to  the  penitentiary  and  the  State-prison  ; 
but  in  the  case  of  Domesticus  he  must  be  paid  and 
pampered  while  he  went  on,  spoiling  the  supplies, 
abusing  the  property,  and  destroying  the  digestion 
and  the  temper  of  his  employer.  It  was  not  a  mat 
ter,  the  Prince  would  say,  of  fifteen  pounds  of  beef, 
ruined  by  being  sent  up  half  raw,  or  another  fifteen 
pounds,  equally  ruined,  by  being  cooked  to  a  crisp. 
It  was  a  matter  of  principle.  It  struck  at  the 
foundations  of  Society.  It  concerned  the  great  law 
of  supply  and  demand,  and  of  the  relations  between 
capital  and  labor,  and  if  Domesticus  were  to  be 
exempt  from  all  obligations — legal,  social,  and 
moral — communism  and  nihilism,  and  every  other 
baneful,  destructive,  and  accursed  ism,  abroad  in  a 
wicked  world,  would  be  let  loose,  and  universal 
anarchy  was  only  a  question  of  time. 

The  Princess,  who  was  selfish  enough  to  be  less  im 
mediately  concerned  about  the  foundations  of  society 
than  about  the  harmony  of  her  household,  and  the 
happiness  of  her  Prince,  was  too  ready  to  take  all 
these  vehement  tirades  as,  in  some  sense,  a  reflec 
tion  upon  her  internal  administration. 

Then  the  Prince  would  emphatically  declare  that 
it  was  not  the  Little  Lady  who  was  in  fault,  nor 
her  co-sufferers  and  fellow  victims.  He  would 
insist  that  the  fact  that  nothing  had  happened  to  her 
which  did  not  come  to  all  of  her  sex  and  station, 
was  proof  of  his  contention,  and  that  the  exceptional 


A  MALADROIT  PRINCE.  g\ 

cases  of  success  or  exemption,  which  he  sometimes 
cited,  only  served  to  make  good  the  general  rule. 
But  she  invariably  found  that  the  sole  result  of  these 
periodical  outbursts  was  to  put  upon  her  the  burden 
and  responsibility  of  a  summary  dismissal  of  the 
delinquents  who  excited  them,  and  the  procurement 
and  substitution  of  their  successors. 

It  would  have  been  well  for  the  Prince  if  he  had 
confined  himself  to  occasional  denunciations  of 
Domesticus,  but,  in  spite  of  the  repeated  warnings 
he  had  received,  in  his  failures  already  recounted, 
he  would  persist  in  forcing  upon  the  Princess  sug 
gestions  which  were  wholly  impracticable,  and  which, 
instead  of  alleviating  her  distresses,  only  aggravated 
them.  One  of  these,  and,  perhaps,  the  most  ill 
advised  and  unpalatable,  was  the  periodical  proposi 
tion  of  a  housekeeper.  The  Princess  Otiosa  had  a 
housekeeper  and  everything  went  on  like  clock 
work,  in  her  palace.  In  the  great  ancestral  realm 
of  Mater  Patria  the  housekeeper  was  a  permanent 
institution.  Domesticus  himself  was  subject,  and 
had  been,  from  time  immemorial,  to  her  delegated 
authority.  There,  the  flowerets  of  the  family  were 
potted  and  trained  in  the  plantarium  for  such  tender 
shoots,  tended  by  the  nursery  governess,  and  the 
general  routine  of  the  household  was  in  the  hands 
of  the  housekeeper,  so  that  the  mistress  of  the  man 
sion  was  not  tied  down  to  the  details  and  drudgery 
which  beset  her  here.  Why  not  copy  the  good 
ways  of  the  mother  country  ? 

Such   suggestions  as  these  would    bring  every 


Q2  DO  ME  STIC  US. 

drop  of  maternal  and  patriotic  blood  in  the  veins  of 
the  Little  Lady  to  the  boiling  point.  She  would 
have  none  of  the  ways  of  Mater  Patria.  If  she 
could  not  rule  her  own  house,  she  did  not  want  a 
roof  to  her  head.  A  housekeeper,  forsooth — as  if, 
with  all  her  cares,  and  anxieties,  and  toils,  this  new 
and  greater  burden  were  to  be  imposed  on  her,  and 
she  to  be  set  aside,  as  unfit  to  manage  her  own 
palace,  and  be  put  on  the  retired  list,  and  told  to 
twirl  her  thumbs  and  do  nothing ! 

And  to  tear  the  dear  children  from  her,  and  put 
sticks  in  the  plantarium  for  the  little  tendrils  of 
their  hearts  to  twine  about,  instead  of  the  maternal 
stock,  with  its  native  roots  and  its  encircling 
branches!  It  was  all  well  enough  in  Mater  Patria, 
where  everything  ran  in  grooves,  cut  centuries  ago, 
which  it  was  a  part  of  national  pride  and  duty  to 
keep,  forever,  at  the  same  depth,  and  width,  and  dis 
tance,  and  divergence.  Over  there,  housekeepers 
and  nursery  governesses  might  fill  places  in  the 
household,  as  permanent  as  maids  of  honor  in  the 
royal  court  But  not  here,  where  every  right-minded 
woman  wants  to  know  what  is  going  on  in  her 
house,  and  not  be  kept  in  the  dark  by  intermediates 
between  her,  and  her  children,  and  her  servants. 
And  as  for  the  Princess  Otiosa,  what  could  the 
Prince,  or  any  other  man,  know  about  the  real  state 
of  the  case?  Had  she  not,  herself,  admitted,  at 
countless  afternoon  teas  and  in  all  social  circles,  that 
her  housekeeper  was  a  nuisance,  and  was  not  the 
Princess  Blandiloqua  fairly  driven  out  of  her  palace 


,/  MALADROIT  PRINCE.  93 

by  the  nursery  governess,  who  cam  j  between  her 
and  her  husband,  and  how  could  any  well-regulated 
prince  look  his  princess  in  the  face  and  propose  such 
subversive  and  humiliating  changes  ? 

The  Prince  was  always  glad  to  beat  a  retreat  from 
this  particular  line,  although  never  wise  enough  to 
abstain  entirely,  as  he  ought  to  have  done,  from  ex 
cursions  into  the  dangerous  sphere  of  discussion 
into  which  the  doings  of  Domesticus  invited.  In 
fact,  it  was,  sometimes,  impossible  to  avoid  being 
insensibly  drawn  thither,  as  into  an  ambuscade, 
because  of  the  innumerable  occasions  in  which  the 
last  trial  to  which  the  Princess  had  been  subjected, 
or  the  latest  disturbance  of  his  own  peace  and  com 
fort,  or  the  recital  of  new  enormities  practiced  on 
some  relative  or  friend,  was  the  topic  of  the  hour. 
From  the  particular  instance,  the  Prince  would,  natur 
ally,  diverge  to  the  general  subject,  and  presently 
would  become  entangled  in  the  whole  vast,  intricate. 

o 

and  inextricable  theme  of  Domesticus.  The  Prince 
had  a  large  stock  of  unsettled  views  on  this  topic, 
but  as  they  had  never  been  subjected  to  any  prac 
tical  test,  the  Princess  gradually  found  that  they 
were  valuable  only  in  theory,  and  that  Domesticus 
was  a  problem  she  must  solve  by  herself. 

And  she  was  nearer  its  solution  than  she  knew. 
She  had,  during  the  long  years  of  her  probation, 
from  which  we  have  drawn  only  a  few  scattered 
incidents,  been  bringing  to  the  study  of  Domesti 
cus,  in  all  his  ways  and  in  every  department  of 


94  DOMESTICUS. 

his  shiftless  doings,  the  kind  of  minute  scrutiny  and 
microscopic  observation  which  Darwin  gave  to  the 
manoeuvres  and  mound  building  of  those  real 
workers,  the  ants  in  his  garden ;  and  she  had  come 
to  know  and  understand  the  subject  of  her  study, 
just  as  the  great  naturalist  knew  the  omni-meander- 
ing  and  ravaging  insects,  in  all  their  devious  ins 
and  outs.  Compared  with  her  certain  knowledge 
of  facts  and  her  accumulated  store  of  experience, 
of  what  value  were  the  speculations  of  the  Prince? 
The  Little  Lady  could  not  reason,  or  draw 
deductions,  or  construct  a  syllogism,  but  she  knew 
all  that  any  one  could  know  about  Domesticus,  and 
for  her  to  hear  the  Prince  discourse  on  this  subject 
was  as  if  an  old  mariner,  who  had  sailed  all  the  seas, 
without  ever  being  taught  the  science  of  naviga 
tion,  were  to  be  instructed  in  seamanship  by  a  col 
lege  sophomore  or  a  student  of  theology.  What 
she  wanted  was  not  dissertations  on  the  relation 
between  employer  and  the  employed,  or  on  the  sup 
posed  short  comings  of  mistresses  as  the  cause 
whereof  the  delinquencies  of  maids  were  the  effect, 
but  sympathy,  and  forbearance,  and  a  tender  sense 
of  the  hard  conditions  by  which  the  symmetry  of 
her  home  life,  so  precious  in  her  sight,  and  so 
sacredly  guarded  by  her  care,  was,  in  spite  of  all 
her  efforts,  being  constantly  chipped,  at  its  delicate 
edge,  by  the  rasping  contact  with  Domesticus.  She 
gave  less  and  less  heed  to  the  generalizations  of  the 
Prince,  and  as  these  sounded,  more  and  more,  like 
empty  verbiage,  so  did  his  particular  instances  of 


MALADROIT  PRINCE. 


95 


better  conditions  elsewhere,  real  or  imaginary,  be 
come  less  and  less  disturbing. 

All  unconsciously,  she  was  coming  towards  the 
possession,  in  her  own  right,  of  whatever  clue 
there  may  be  in  this  tangled  labyrinth.  It  was 
with  her  as  it  is  with  so  many  of  her  sex.  The 
road  to  truth  did  not  lie  over  the  great  cause 
ways  and  viaducts  of  reason,  constructed  by  skilled 
hands  and  by  scientific  methods,  but  by  a  native 
right  of  way,  through  instinct,  sensibility,  and  the 
heart.  Thus  helped,  when  seemingly  most  help 
less,  she  had,  like  a  pioneer  in  the  unexplored 
forest,  blazed  her  own  path  in  the  wilderness  thickets 
into  which  Domesticus  had  driven  her,  and  she  was 
beginning  to  know  her  way.  In  the  treacherous 
pitfalls,  she  was  planting  some  sure  stepping-stones. 
She  could  not  explain  to  others,  or  formulate  for 
herself,  the  results  she  had  attained,  or  even  fully 
trust  the  strength  they  gave,  but  she  knew  she  was 
stronger,  and  she  believed  she  was  going  towards 
the  light. 

The  strong  foundation  of  her  quiet  confidence, 
although  she  knew  it  not,  was  her  abiding,  native 
sense  of  justice.  This  is  the  true  rock  on  which 
all  human  relations  must  subsist.  It  is  like  the 
great  stones  on  which  the  Temple  stood.  She 
had  come  to  feel,  rather  than  to  know  how  largely 
this  great  primal  law  was  set  at  nought  in  the  deal 
ings  of  Domesticus,  who  himself  knew  no  law,  and 
taught  his  followers  none,  save  the  law  of  self 
defence  and  the  law  of  retaliation. 


96 


DOMESTICUS. 


Now  what  we  call  justice  is,  in  human  affairs, 
simply,  generosity  in  its  highest  action.  Were  the 
true,  generic  stamp  of  human  nature  undefaced,  no 
native,  and  because  native,  no  generous  act  would 
ever  meet  a  base  return,  but  only  its  just  equiva 
lent,  in  reciprocal  acts  of  kindliness  and  service,  and 
justice  would  be  the  all-pervading  rule  of  life.  In 
spite  of  our  degeneracy,  which  turns  justice  into 
a  lawgiver  and  an  avenger,  and  which  puts  and 
keeps  the  race,  of  necessity,  under  her  behest,  or 
her  ban,  there  are  some  fine  natures,  in  which  the 
love  of  justice,  for  its  own  sake,  shines  in  something 
of  its  original  brightness,  set  in  crystalline  beauty, 
in  the  central  adamant  of  the  soul.  Our  Little 
Lady  was  the  unconscious  possessor  of  this  rare 
treasure,  and  it  was  the  talisman  whose  use  and 
power  she  was,  by  degrees  and  only  imperfectly, 
learning. 

Her  knowledge  came  only  by  long  discipline. 
She  had  found  that  to  understand  and  to  rule  Do- 
mesticus,  she  must,  herself,  be  capable  of  doing  his 
work.  Only  thus  could  she  stand  on  a  vantage 
ground  of  absolute  justice  in  her  dealings  with  him. 
To  exact  honesty  and  integrity  in  the  doing  of  his 
work,  and  success  in  its  results,  might  be  impossible, 
but  a  great  step  toward  these  ends  was  gained 
when  she  showed  the  shirking,  or  recreant  non- 
worker  that  the  thing  she  required  could  not  only 
be  done  well,  and  according  to  her  standard,  but 
that  she  could  do  it  herself.  Not  only  had  her  fair, 
jewelled  finger  been  pointed  to  every  nook  and  cor- 


./  MALADROIT  /'AY.VcV-:. 


97 


nor,  from  which  the  scouring  sand  or  the  cleansing 
brush  hud  b.-en  wickedly  or  surreptitiously  withheld, 
or  from  which  the  uplifted  duster  had  been  furtively 
withdrawn;  she  had  herself  draped,  from  long- 
closcd  clipboard^  and  from  tuck-holes — abominated 
by  the  true  housewife — their  slatternly  accumula 
tions.  She  would  go  on  her  knees,  if  occasion  re 
quired,  for  the  instant  completeness  of  the  work,  as 
readily  upon  a  hearth  stone  or  the  hall  floor,  as 
upon  a  hassock  in  the  proudest  shrine. 

Many  things  which  Domesticus  pretended  to  do 
and  was  paid  for  doing,  and  never  did,  she  not  only 
did,  with  uiKTring  skill,  but  taught  the  way  of  doing, 
though  well  knowing  it  was  labor  perhaps  lost  so 
far  as  h  T  own  personal  advantage  was  concerned. 
The  fine  yellow  m  al  of  Magna  1'atria,  its  best  gold- 
dust,  she  could  coin  into  rare  products  most  satisfy 
ing  to  sense  and  tastj,  while  in  the  heavy,  untrained 
hand  of  Domesticus  it  was  invariably  spoiled,  and 
wasted,  and  condemned,  as  better  fitted  for  the  hen 
coop  than  the  breakfast  table.  She  could  turn  aside 
from  the  tender  ministries  of  the  sick  room,  to  take 
into  her  own  fair  hand  the  viand  with  which  she 
hoped  to  tempt  the  appetite  of  the  convalescent,  or 
the  invalid,  hold  it,  with  dextrous  manipulation,  over 
the  glowing  coals  of  the  quick  fire,  lighted  under 
her  own  eye,  for  the  exact  time  required  to  bring  it 
to  perfection,  and  then  serve  it,  herself,  at  the  instant, 
so  that  its  flavor  seemed  a  new  revelation  to  its  re 
cipient. 

Like  the  Roman  conquerors,  she  learned  from 
7 


98 


DOMESTICUS. 


her'  enemies.  Wherever  a  device  or  a  method, 
known,  or  half  known,  to  Domesticus,  had  in  it  the 
possibility  of  improvement,  she  made  it  subservient 
to  her  skill  and  her  quick  sense  of  observation,  until, 
little  by  little,  without  descending  from  her  proper 
sphere,  she  knew  and  was  certain,  that  in  every 
department  of  the  daily  service  she  could,  if  it  were 
necessary,  herself  surpass  her  servitors.  And  yet 
there  were  some  things  which  seemed  impossible 
and  beyond  her  reach,  and  one  of  these  was  the 
grandmother's  apple-pie.  But  even  of  this  she  did 
not  despair,  for  hope  was  of  the  essence  of  her  sun 
lit  soul. 


CHAPTER   XI. 

JUVENTUS. 

THE  Imperial  City  was  full  of  seekers  after  For 
tune.  Like  the  Virgins  in  the  Scriptures,  some 
of  them  were  wise  and  some  of  them  were  foolish. 
Among  the  wise,  few  were  wiser  than  Juventus. 
From  the  Northern  forest-clearing  whence  he  came, 
from  the  rushing,  never-failing  streams,  into  whose 
depths  he  had  cast  his  line,  long  before  he  threw  it 
into  the  troubled  metropolitan  waters,  from  the 
bleak  rock-ribbed  uplands  where  he  had  braved 
the  winter  winds,  before  he  came  to  buffet  with  the 
storms  of  fate,  he  brought  with  him,  as  his  whole 
patrimony,  three  priceless  gifts, — strength,  courage, 
and  poverty. 

The  sages  of  his  tribe,  after  their  simple  fashion, 
had  taught  him  out  of  their  wisdom  which  came 
from  close  contact,  day  and  night,  winter  and  sum 
mer,  with  the  earth  and  the  air.  Like  the  sorcerers 
who  could  tame  wild  horses  with  whispered  words 
and  charm  away  witches  with  rosemary,  they  had 
their  own  secret  spells  by  which  Nature  was  made 
subservient  to  the  human  will.  They  never  wan 
dered  out  of  sight  of  the  smoke  wreaths  of  their 
cabins,  but  their  touch  could  turn  the  tall,  forest 

99 


DOMESTICUS. 

pine  into  the  shapely  mast  and  send  it  forth,  no 
longer  to  sigh  and  murmur  in  the  midnight  wind, 
but  bending  under  the  weight  of  outspread  sails, 
'  to  rise,  and  dip,  and  plunge,  through  calm  and  storm, 
from  ocean  to  ocean,  till  its  path  had  girdled  the 
Slobe  They  sent  Juventus  forth,  to  make  his  own 
'  way  where  all  ways  met.  They  bade  him  be  brave 
and  wary,  staunch  of  will  and  strong  of  purpose; 
to  add  to  his  courage,  constancy,  and  to  constancy, 
vigilance,  and  to  vigilance,  untiring  toil. 

As  the  Roman  youths  found  their  way  to  Athens, 
he  went  to  sit  at  the  feet  of  the  philosophers  in  the 
schools,  where  he  was  taught  in  the  wisdom  of  the 
ancients  and  the  moderns,  and  where,  by  dint  of 
some  native  genius  and  much  severe  discipline,  he 
came  to  see  his  name  written  with  honor  on  the 
Academic  roll,  and  to  become  foremost  as  an  athlete 
on  the  Campus,  as  well  as  in  the  contests  for  scho 
lastic  prizes. 

Thus  equipped,  Juventus  was  cast  into  the  whirl 
pool  of  the  Imperial  City,  to  swim  for  himself, 
was  a  stranger  among  strangers,  facing  his  unknown 
future  with  a  bright  open  countenance,  a  modest 
resoluteness,  and  an  honest  readiness  to  do,  with  his 
might  whatsoever  his  hand  found  to  do. 
knocked  at  many  doors,  to  find  them  shut  and 
barred  until  it  seemed  as  if  there  were  no  vacant 
space  or  chink,  or  crevice,  in  all  the  world  of 
working  forces  by  which  he  was  at  once  encom 
passed  and  excluded. 

He  consulted  the  oracles. 


JUVENTUS..  10I 

At  first  their  responses  seemed  to  him  dubious 
and  discouraging,  but,  after  long  waiting  and  much 
pondering,  he  began  to  discern  the  possible  meaning 
of  their  utterances,  and  at  last,  in  his  own  experi 
ence,  he  found  the  best  interpretation. 

To  his  question,  "  Where  is  the  way  to  success?" 
the  answer — "  Find  the  royal  road  and  it  will  lead 
thither," — seemed  to  him  to  contradict  what  he  had 
always  been  taught,  that  there  was  no  such  royal 
n>ad.  Later,  he  learned  that  for  every  sovereign 
will,  crowned  with  a  true  purpose,  there  is  a  king's 
highway  thrown  up,  which  surely  leads,  if  not  to 
the  loftiest  summits  of  success,  to  its  high  vantage 
grounds. 

To  his  question,  "When  shall  I  succeed?"  the 
answer — "  When  good  luck  comes," — seemed  to 
him  strangely  at  variance  with  the  oft-repeated  say 
ing  that  luck  is  the  refuge  of  fools.  But,  by  and 
by,  he  came  to  comprehend  that  good  luck  means 
only  opportunity,  waited  for,  watched  for,  seized  at 
sight,  and  held  with  firm  grasp. 

To  his  question,  "  What  is  the  secret  of  success?" 
the  answer,  in  a  single  word, — "  Dependence," — 
seemed  a  poor  substitute,  almost  a  mockery,  for  the 
braver  sound  "  Independence,"  which  he  had  waited 
to  hear.  But,  after  a  while,  he  was  schooled  to 
discern  the  truth  that  his  is  the  highest  success  who, 
in  service,  in  rule,  or  in  heroic  action,  exhibits  not 
so  much  his  own  independence  of  his  fellows,  as 
their  constant  need  of  him  and  their  dependence 
upon  him.  To  be  the  earliest  to  take  up  the  daily 


2  «£  **j 
102  DO  ME  STIC  US. 

task,  however  humble ;  the  last  to  quit  the  post  of 
duty,  however  obscure ;  to  be  the  quickest  of  eye, 
the  readiest  of  hand,  the  fleetest  of  foot ;  the  most 
sagacious  to  perceive,  the  most  skillful  to  plan,  the 
most  diligent  to  execute;  the  most  faithful  in  trust 
and  the  most  fearless  for  the  right,  means,  for  every 
such  servitor,  in  whatever  sphere,  final  mastery  and 
supremacy.  He  is  the  most  successful  of  all  men 
who  can  best  bear  the  heaviest  weight  of  human 
interests,  and  so  best  serve  his  kind. 

Juventus,  fortunately,  had  learned  how  to  be 
patient  and  how  to  wait.  His  special  study  and 
training  had  been  in  the  all-embracing  science 
which,  from  its  rudimental  stage  of  star-gazing,  has 
come  to  deal  with  whatsoever  things  can  be  meas 
ured,  or  numbered,  or  computed,  or  set  in  relation 
to  other  things  and  to  the  universe,  and  which, 
being  the  foundation  of  all  most  effective  mechanical 
skill,  as  well  as  of  all  high  processes  of  reasoning, 
had  furnished  him  for  the  best  service  of  hand  and 
brain,  and  given  him  a  training  which  helped  him  to 
wait  without  idleness,  and  to  hope  without  impa 
tience. 

At  last,  he  succeeded,  after  many  fruitless  at 
tempts,  and  as  many  disappointments,  in  finding  his 
way  into  the  inner  workshop  of  a  wizard,  ^enowned 
for  his  dealing  with  hidden  forces  and  his  marvelous 
inventive  skill  in  bringing  them,  by  curious  appli 
ances,  contrived  and  wrought  out  of  his  special 
arcana,  into  the  daily  service  of  mortals.  More 
skillful  than  Boethius,  who  is  said  to  have  made 


JUVENTUS.  I03 

singing  birds  out  of  brass,  he  could,  as  he  showed 
at  a  later  stage  of  his  inventions,  bring  the  articu 
lations  of  human  speech  out  of  inanimate  mate 
rials,  and  even  at  this  earlier  period  he  was  giving 
rare  indications  of  his  weird  control  over  invisible 
elements  and  powers. 

He  was  busied,  when  Juventus  entered,  working 
with  his  own  hands,  and  absorbed  in  an  experiment, 
having  for  its  object  the  ascertainment  of  the  exact 
relative  proportions  in  which  certain  liquids  should 
be  mixed  in  water  to  produce  a  chemical  compound, 
the  properties  of  which  he  wished  to  avail  of  in  the 
operation  of  one  of  his  machines.  To  this  end  he 
was  patiently  filling  vessels  of  varying  size  and 
capacity,  and  pouring  from  one  to  another,  with 
steady  hand  and  keenly  observant  eye.  He  did  not 
pause  an  instant  on  the  entrance  of  Juventus,  but, 
by  his  manner,  seemed  to  permit  his  presence  as  no 
intrusion  or  disturbance,  recognizing  in  the  new 
comer,  from  the  account  given  him  by  the  friend 
who  had  secured  his  admission,  a  novice  in  the 
occult  arts  in  which  he  was,  himself,  so  renowned  a 
master.  But  as  his  mastery  was  by  self-taught 
methods  which  ignored,  and  held  somewhat  in 
disdain,  the  teachings  of  the  schools,  he  looked 
without  special  interest  on  this  scion  of  the  Acad 
emy. 

Juventus  stood,  for  some  time,  a  silent  and  inter 
ested  observer  of  the  wizard's  work.  Presently, 
when  it  seemed  as  if  another  hand  might,  oppor 
tunely,  aid  its  progress,  he  quietly  stepped  forward 


I04  DOME  STIC  US. 

and  gave  his  help,  so  deftly,  and  with  such  intel 
ligent  appreciation  of  the  character  of  the  experi 
ment,  that  his  service  was  accepted,  without  rebuff, 
and  presently,  the  two  men  were  working  together, 
in  dead  silence  and  dead  earnest,  until,  at  length, 
the  slow  process  of  measuring  the  liquids  and  of 
arriving  at  the  desired  result  was  successfully  con 
cluded. 

Then  Juventus,  who  had  by  this  time  grasped  the 
whole  scope  of  the  inventor's  experiment,  which 
was  a  matter  of  simple  chemistry,  took  from  the 
rude  table  in  the  work-room  a  scrap  of  paper,  and 
by  a  rapid  marshalling  of  figures  and  signs,  and  a 
brief  calculation,  reached  and  set  in  plain  terms, 
amounting  to  absolute  demonstration,  the  same 
result  as  to  the  required  relative  proportions  of  the 
chemicals  which  had  made  necessary  for  its  ascer 
tainment,  by  actual  manipulation  and  measurement, 
the  labor  of  hours.  He  modestly  placed  the  paper 
before  the  wizard,  who  looked  at  the  figures  and 
nodded  assent  at  the  result,  but  shook  his  head, 
scornfully,  at  the  process  by  which  it  was  reached. 

"  My  way  is  best  for  me,  because  it  is  my 
own,  and  your  calculation  only  proves  that  I  was 
right,  of  which  I  needed  no  proof.  Book-men  are 
apt  to  become  mere  machines  themselves,  instead 
of  machine  makers.  I  will  have  none  of  their 
ways.  But  there  may  be  work  for  you  in  the  outer 
shop,  and  I  see  you  know  how  to  use  hand  as  well 
as  head.  You  can  try,"  and,  opening  the  door 
leading  into  the  loft  which  served  as  a  shop,  and 


JUVENTUS.  I05 

shoving  Juventus  forth,  he  made  a  sign  and  whis 
pered  a  word  to  a  workman  in  charge,  the  result 
of  \vhich  was  that  a  day's  mechanical  work  for  a 
clay's  wages  was  offered,  and  was  forthwith  availed 
of,  by  our  fortune  seeker. 

The  thing  which  Juventus  was  set  to  do  was  the 
putting  together  of  the  related  parts  of  a  new  and 
delicate  instrument,  a  pet  offspring  of  the  wizard's 
inventive  brain,  by  which  men  were  to  be  enabled 
to  multiply  the  transmission  of  messages  over  great 
distances,  magically  conveyed,  by  methods  whereof 
he  knew  the  charm  and  secret.  Juventus  willingly 
applied  himself  to  this  humble  task,  and  resumed  it 
on  the  next  day,  having  been  duly  enrolled  on  the 
staff  of  workmen  in  the  factory.  During  the  morn 
ing,  after  putting  together  and  adjusting  with  pre 
cision  and  accuracy  the  separate  and  delicate  parts 
of  the  mechanism  to  his  own  satisfaction,  it  happened 
that  at  the  moment  of  completion,  he  was  told  to 
take  it  into  the  inner  work-shop,  where  the  wizard 
had  just  called  for  a  finished  instrument.  Placing 
it  on  the  table,  and  receiving  a  nod  of  recognition 
from  the  wizard,  Juventus  said  : 

"  May  I  venture  a  word  about  this  piece  of 
work  ?  " 

"  Say  on,"  said  the  wizard. 

"  Here,"  said  Juventus,  placing  his  finger  upon 
the  instrument,  "  is  a  superfluous  screw.  It  can 
easily  be  dispensed  with.  Bring  these  two  an 
eighth  of  an  inch  nearer  each  other  and — " 

"  You  are  right,  entirely  right,"  said  the  wizard, 


I05  DOMESTICUS. 

interrupting  him,  his  quick  gesture  showing  that  his 
eye  took  in  the  whole  suggested  change,  at  once, 
and  that  no  further  word  was  needed.  "  That  will 
save  a  day's  work  on  every  instrument.  When  you 
come  to-morrow,  do  not  stay  out  yonder.  I  want 
you  here." 

And  so  good  luck  came  to  Juventus. 


CHAPTER   XII. 

A  GRANDMOTHER'S  APPLE-PIE. 

ONE  bright  morning  the  Prince  was  about  leav 
ing    his   palace   for  his   daily   round  of   duty, 
when,  as  he  kissed  the   Little  Lady,  with  accus 
tomed  tenderness,  he  asked  her,  as  was  also   his 
wont,  what  he  should  send  home  ? 

"  We  had  chops  and  sweet-breads  yesterday," 
she  murmured,  returning  his  embrace. 

This  statement,  as  a  reminiscence,  might  be  sup 
posed  to  have  some  possible  interest,  but,  as  it 
threw  no  light  on  the  subject  of  his  inquiry,  the 
Prince  persevered. 

"  What  shall  it  be,  dearest,  I  am  in  something  of 
a  hurry." 

"  O  dear,"  said  the  Princess,  "  why  cannot  we 
live  without  eating?  Send  anything  you  please, 
there  is  nothing  now,  except  beef,  and  mutton,  and 
poultry." 

"A  piece  of  beef  to  roast?"  said  the  Prince.  This 
was  an  original  suggestion  which  he  was  in  the 
habit  of  making,  almost  every  morning,  under  the 
same  circumstances. 

"  No,"  said  the  Princess,  "  you  will  want  that  to 
morrow." 

107 


!  Og  D  OMES  TIC  US. 

"  Chickens?"  said  the  Prince. 

"  Oh,  she  spoils  potiltry." 

"  She  spoils  everything,"  said  the  Prince,  getting 
a  little  out  of  patience. 

"Well,  what  am  I  to  do?  She  is  the  tenth  since 
Christmas,  and  they  are  all  alike." 

"  Break  up  housekeeping,"  said  the  Prince,  in  a 
determined  tone  of  voice,  "  rent  the  palace,  and  go 
to  the  Via  Quinta  Hotel." 

"  What,  take  these  dear,  precious  children  to  a 
place  where  they  would  never  have  a  morsel  of 
plain,  wholesome  food,  and  have  to  associate  with 
people  you  know  nothing  about,  and  deprive  them 
of  a  home  ;  I  would  starve  first !  " 

And  the  Princess  sat  down  on  the  nearest  settle, 
in  a  way  that  made  the  Prince  tremble. 

"  Of  course,"  said  he,  "  home  is  better  for  the 
children,  and  for  all  of  us — only  I  am  afraid  Domes- 
ticus  is  going  to  be  the  death  of  you." 

"  Perhaps  he  will  be,"  said  the  Princess,  dismally, 
giving  way,  for  the  moment,  to  foreboding,  "and  if 
I  could  only  be  sure  that  my  darling  children  would 
be  properly  cared  for,  I  should  die  happy,  but  the 
thought  of  a  step-mother — " 

"  Oh,  don't  speak  to  me  so,"  cried  the  Prince, 
frightened  out  of  his  wits,  and  as  he  clasped  the 
Princess  in  his  arms,  and  she  gradually  grew  recon 
ciled  to  the  prospect  of  continued  life,  she  whis 
pered  in  his  ear — he  looking  furtively  at  his  watch, 
meanwhile — 

"  I  suppose  it  had  better  be  porter-house  steaks." 


A  GRANDMOTHER'S  APPLE-PIE.  lOg 

And  porter-house  steaks  it  was. 

Hardly  had  the  great  door  closed  on  her  departing 
spouse,  before  the  Little  Lady  became  thoroughly 
ashamed  of  the  momentary  weakness  to  which  she 
had  given  way.  She  knew  very  well,  that  however 
feebler  vessels  of  her  sex  might  succumb,  and  fly 
to  foreign  parts,  or  to  hotels,  or  lodgings,  she 
had  no  more  intention  or  fear  of  being  done  to 
death  by  Domesticus,  than  she  had  of  being  divorced 
from  her  husband.  She  knew  she  was  getting  the 
better  of  Domesticus  every  day  and  that  his  com 
plete  conquest  was  only  a  question  of  time.  She 
betook  herself  to  her  arm  chair,  and  as  she  curled 
herself  in  its  encircling  and  comforting  embrace, 
regretted,  more  and  more,  that  she  had  shown  the 
white  feather,  even  for  a  moment ;  yet  she  excused 
herself,  partly,  as  she  might  well  have  done  wholly, 
in  the  retrospect  of  some  sharp  trials,  recent  and 
remote,  which  had  jarred  her  nerves,  and  tried  her 
temper,  and  left  her  almost  at  her  wits'  end,  all 
unknown  to  the  Prince,  or  to  any  one  else. 

Then  she  revolved  in  her  mind  many  things  which 
brought  to  her,  gradually,  a  sense  of  relief  and  sat 
isfaction.  She  was  no  longer  in  the  dark,  or  in 
doubt,  about  Domesticus.  She  saw  clearly,  and 
knew  thoroughly,  all  that  was  needed  to  be  seen  or 
known,  and  she  could  be  just  to  him  and  to  her 
self.  After  charging  to  his  long,  dark,  unsettled 
account,  all  his  sins  of  omission  and  commission, 
all  his  high  crimes  and  misdemeanors,  as  well  as 
his  inferior  and  innumerable  pecadilloes,  was  he, 


JIO 


DOMESTICUS. 


after  all,  as  black  as  he  was  painted,  or  as  she  had 
often  pictured  him  during  her  long,  bitter  warfare  ? 
Could  she  not  give  Domesticus  his  due,  while  exact 
ing  to  the  uttermost,  what  was  due  from  him  to 
herself?  If  ignorance  was  inwrought  in  every  fibre 
of  his  constitution,  was  not  ignorance  the  normal 
state  of  every  untaught  being  ?  If  idleness  was 
the  breath  of  his  nostrils,  was  it  not  the  natural 
corrosive  of  all  human  energy,  uninspired  and  un- 
impelled  by  adequate  motive  ?  If  ingratitude  was 
his  constant  requital  for  kindness,  was  not  this  base 
alloy  common  to  all  unrefined  natures  ?  If  insub 
ordination  was  his  besetting  sin,  was  it  not  the 
primal  vice  of  the  whole  brotherhood  of  man  ? 
After  all,  if  the  many  nations  of  the  earth  are  of 
one  blood,  were  they  not  all  marred  by  the  same 
blow  ?  Of  what  avail  the  charity  that  suffereth 
long,  if  it  cannot  suffer  the  manners  and  the  want 
of  manners,  the  short  comings  and  the  long  wan 
derings  of  Domesticus,  and  learn  to  put  up  patiently 
with  him,  as  with  so  many  other  evils,  real  or  fan 
cied? 

The  Little  Lady,  as  she  pursued  her  mental  re 
trospect,  in  this  spirit,  found  herself  readily  conced 
ing,  that  with  the  exception  of  the  dishonesty  of 
the  thieving  Hebe,  the  pang  of  which  no  time  could 
efface,  and  of  occasional  invasions  of  the  minor 
rights  of  property,  less  criminal  than  careless,  the 
whole  uninventoried  possessions  of  the  Prince  and 
herself,  and  of  her  children  and  guests,  in  all  the 
height  and  length  and  breadth  of  the  palace,  had 


A  GRAND  MO  THER '  S  A  PPL  E-  PIE.  T  l  j 

been  safe,  through  many  revolving  years,  in  the 
care  and  custody  of  Domesticus.  And  how  much 
real  service  had  been  the  result  of  his  daily  and 
nightly  toil,  even  when  over-rewarded,  or  grudg 
ingly  rendered,  or  only  in  part  performed,  and  with 
a  blundering  hand  ?  Judged  by  the  test  and  meas 
ure  of  temptation  resisted,  and  evil  example  and 
influence  withstood,  was  not  virtue,  pre-eminently, 
the  rule  with  his  many  emissaries,  and  vice  the 
exception  ?  Taken  as  a  class,  she  asked  herself, 
where,  in  all  the  history  of  communities,  could  be 
found  a  fairer  record  of  unstained  character  than 
among  the  myriad  workers,  of  the  weaker  sex,  in 
the  households,  high  and  low,  of  the  Imperial  City  ? 
These  things,  and  many  other  things,  the  Little 
Lady  meditated,  as  she  sat  in  her  great  easy  chair, 
with  her  invisible  thinking-cap  on  her  head,  her 
hands  folded,  her  eyes  half  shut,  and  her  face,  not 
clouded,  but  only  shadowed,  with  grave  thoughts 
which  followed  one  another  in  quick  succession,  as 
light  clouds  drift  athwart  the  summer  sky.  She 
had  learned  so  much  and  gained  so  much  by  her 
long  experience,  that  the  self-confidence  and  reso 
lution  she  now  felt  established  within  her,  she  knew 
were  genuine,  her  own  possessions,  not  borrowed 
or  picked  up,  or  won  by  chance,  but  gained  by  her 
own  unaided  toil  and  skill,  and  therefore  hers  by 
absolute  right  And  to  these  elements  was  added 
the  ability  to  use  them,  so  that,  by  degrees,  she 
came  to  the  clear  comprehension  of  the  truth  that 
real  mastery  is  not  by  plans  or  contrivances,  how- 


II2  DO  ME  STIC  US. 

ever  ingenious,  for  making  over  the  world,  but  by 
simply  acting  so  as  to  make  the  most  and  the  best 
of  it  as  it  is. 

"  That  which  is  crooked  cannot  be  made  straight," 
said  the  Little  Lady  to  herself,  "  and  if  Domesticus, 
like  so  many  other  things,  and  so  many  other  per 
sons,  is  irretrievably  crooked,  why  should  I  wonder 
that  he  does  not  make  himself  straight,  and  become, 
all  at  once — what  everybody  is  blaming  him  for  not 
being — absolutely  perfect." 

At  the  end  of  her  meditations,  being  now  in  a 
glow  and  fervor  of  self-reliance,  beyond  any  she  had 
ever  felt  before,  the  Princess  rose  and  girded  herself 
with  a  clean  and  wide  linen  apron,  and  laid  aside  all 
her  rings,  save  only  her  wedding  ring,  and  said  fur 
ther  to  herself,  "  I  must  do  penance  for  my  fault  of 
this  morning.  I  will  try  once  more  to  make  a 
grandmother's  apple-pie  and  this  time  I  mean  to 
succeed." 

This  high  resolve  was  put  into  immediate  execu 
tion. 

She  was  greatly  aided  in  its  accomplishment  by 
a  timely  gift,  made  to  the  Prince,  by  a  friend,  in  a 
rural  district,  of  a  barrel  of  the  required  fruit  of  the 
sole  description  worthy,  in  the  estimation  of  the 
Prince,  of  being  devoted  to  so  high  a  use.  Of  all 
the  varied  products  with  which  Pomona,  goddess  of 
fruits,  enriches  the  soil  of  Magna  Patria,  none  so 
full  of  virtue  as  that  type  of  rounded  perfectness 
which  gives  its  name  to  the  very  centre  of  the  organ 
by  which  the  soul  looks  out  on  Nature.  Of  all  the 


'.v  .irn.E- /'//•:.          \  ^ 

many  varieties  of  this  first  of  fruits,  the  Prince 
maintained  that  none  could  compare — for  all  the 
purposes  of  the  culinary  art — with  one  choice  kind 
which,  in  his  boyhood,  he  had  gathered  in  the  up 
land,  ancestral  orchard,  the  apple  of  the  pointed  hill 
top,  the  Spitzenberg,  as  men  named  it  in  the  marker 
place,  whose  deep  red,  delicate  skin  enfolded  a  spicy 
flavor  unrivalled  and  unapproachable,  if  only  the 
dexterous,  initiated  hand  could  draw  it  forth. 

The  Prince  had  never  read  the  Epigrams  of 
Martial,  but,  without  knowing  that  he  borrowed 
from  that  illustrious  author,  he  had  frequently,  in 
his  own  modern  phrase,  expressed  the  sentiment 
which  declares  that  "Art  is  not  enough  for  a  cook ; 
he  must  have  the  taste  of  his  master."  But,  alas ! 
that  taste  Domcsticus  would  never  acquire,  nor 
could  it  be  imparted  to  an  unwilling  recipient,  and 
to  have  a  barrel  of  Spitzcnbergs  in  his  cellarium, 
with  no  one  capable  of  extracting  their  hidden  flavor 
and  transferring  it  to  the  palate,  was  rather  an  aggra 
vation  than  a  solace. 

The  Princess  entered  the  arena  where  her  self- 
imposed  ordeal  was  to  be  endured,  with  a  light, 
firm  step  and  a  beaming  face.  The  time  had  been 
when  crossing  its  threshold,  on  such  an  errand,  she 
would  have  encountered  fierce  frowns  and  arms 
a-kimbo,  and  a  discordant  clanging  of  pans  and  pots, 
culminating  in  a  pitched  battle  with  Domesticus. 
But  now  that  she  knew  all  the  wiles  and  stratagems 
of  the  enemy,  she  was  able  to  condense  the  history  of 
a  campaign  such  as  that  upon  which  she  was  now 
8 


U4  DO  ME  STIC  US 

entering,  into  as  brief  a  compass  as  Caesar's  famous 
bulletin.  She  came,  saw,  and  conquered.  What 
she  saw,  was  a  display  of  pent  up  wrath  which  she 
knew  very  well  was  stirred  to  its  lowest  depths  by 
this  sudden  invasion,  and  would  doubtless  make 
the  price  of  success,  should  she  succeed,  as  great  a 
penalty  as  could  be  inflicted,  and  yet  it  dared  not 
break  out  in  open  revolt  against  the  invincible  air 
and  aspect  of  the  Princess,  in  whose  little  hand  the 
rolling  pin  was  as  complete  a  symbol  of  sovereignty 
as  was  the  sceptre  of  Charlemange  in  his  iron 
grasp. 

And  now,  wonderful  to  relate,  but  as  true  as  the 
most  trivial  incident  recorded  in  this  narrative,  as 
the  Little  Lady  began  her  task,  and,  gradually,  the 
various  ingredients  which  she  required  for  its  per 
formance  were  set  in  order,  and  measured,  and  min 
gled,  by  her  own  dainty  fingers,  all  unseen  to  her, 
and  invisible  to  mortal  eye,  came  trooping  back,  not 
the  entire  body,  but  a  select  and  picked  detachment 
of  the  same  good  fairies  who  had  decamped,  years 
before,  when  she  began  the  combat  with  Domesti- 
cus,  single  handed  and  alone.  This  returning  pha 
lanx  were  ever  on  the  alert,  a  hovering  and  recon- 
noitering  force,  swift  to  espy  where  true  courage  in 
the  feeblest  mortal  entered  the  lists  against  destruc 
tive  powers  of  the  air,  and  ready  to  fly  to  their  suc 
cor.  Only  they  could  not  interfere  against  Domes- 
ticus,  in  behalf  of  any  struggling  victims  of  his 
machinations  who  had  not  by  their  unaided  efforts 
earned  the  right  to  such  invisible  and  sure  support. 


A  GRANDMOTHERS  APPLE-PIE.  i  j  5 

According  to  the  wisdom  of  the  ancients,  who 
declared  that  the  divinities  helped  those  who  helped 
themselves,  so  did  the  good  fairies  of  this  time  leave 
to  the  wicked  arts  and  treacherous  devices  of  Do- 
mesticus  all  the  many  subjects  of  his  power  who 
were  not  of  such  stuff  as  to  persevere,  until  they 
discovered  the  secret  of  deliverance,  in  learning  to 
do  for  themselves  all  the  things  he  pretended  to  do 
for  them. 

This  secret  the  Little  Lady  had  learned  and  knew 
she  had  learned,  and  now  that  she  came  to  test  her 
strength  to  the  uttermost,  all  unaided  as  it  seemed, 
these  unseen,  nimble  adjutants  were  on  the  alert,  to 
bring  her  aid  and  comfort,  and  be  her  invisible  allies. 
They  perched  on  the  edges  of  the  amphora  in  which 
the  materials  of  the  projected  pie  were  enclosed. 
They  steadied  the  eye,  and  guided  the  hand  of  the 
Little  Lady,  as  the  work  went  on.  They  nerved 
her  to  reject,  with  calm  disdain,  the  proffer  of  lemon, 
wherewith  Domesticus  tempted  her,  in  the  critical 
moment.  They  strengthened  her  to  persist,  against 
threatenings  of  disaster  and  ruin,  in  placing  the 
gleaming  segments  of  the  Spitzenbergs  on  the  shin 
ing  glazed  bottom  of  the  deep  dish,  without  deposit 
of  any  intervening  substance.  Finally,  they  hovered 
round  the  oven  door  and  kept  watch  and  ward  over 
the  fortunes  of  the  completed  pie,  which,  as  a  last 
resort,  Domesticus  would  fain  have  ruined  in  the 
baking,  by  a  malicious  intermeddling  with  dampers, 
had  not  th?  agile  sprites,  by  swift  discharges  of  their 
invisible  artillery — to  human  sight,  only  chance 


DOMESTICUS. 

scintillations  of  red-hot  sparks — warded  off  the 
traitorous  attack,  and  ensured  the  triumphant  suc 
cess  of  this  labor  of  love. 

The  victory  being  fully  achieved,  the  Little  Lady 
sought  an  interval  of  repose  in  her  own  apartment. 
This  was  suddenly  broken  in  upon,  by  the  tidings 
that  Decima,  of  whom  dishonorable  mention  had 
been  made  by  the  Princess  in  the  morning,  as  the 
"  tenth  since  Christmas,"  was  about  to  depart  from 
the  palace,  in  high  dudgeon,  and  was  demanding 
her  wages. 

"Send  Decima  to  me,"  said  the  Princess,  wholly 
unconcerned,  and  with  a  sense  of  relief  at  parting 
with  number  ten  which  fully  compensated  for  any 
concern  as  to  the  coming  of  number  eleven. 

"What  is  the  matter?"  she  asked,  when  the 
self-exiled  Decima,  enveloped  in  full  outgoing  attire, 
and  with  a  very  inflamed  visage,  appeared  on  the 
door-sill.  "Are  you  going  away,  because  I  chose 
to  make  an  apple-pie  in  my  own  house?" 

Decima  had  prepared  a  valedictory  which  was 
quite  perfect,  to  her  thinking,  but  which,  slightly 
marred  in  the  delivery,  ran,  somewhat,  on  this  wise: 

"  Its  me  with  seventeen  years  experience  that 
never  was  insulted  before  by  a  lady  and  if  it  was 
leaving  out  lemons  was  wanted  which  every  genteel 
respectable  family  knows  that  lemons  is  needed  in 
apple-pies  and  indeed  where  would  the  apple  be 
but  for  the  lemon  unless  it  is  plain  pastry  for  taverns 
and  such  likes  and  if  it  is  the  bottom  crust  was  to 
be  saved  and  skimping  the  likes  of  that  I  never  saw 


A  GRANDMOTHER'S  APPLE-PIE.  j  j^ 

and  no  lady  would  begrudge  it  and  to  see  it  before 
me  own  eyes  which  has  lived  with  the  first  families 
and  it  is  me  character  which  is  as  good  as  any  ones 
and  its  all  the  same  as  being  turned  away  without 
warning  and  its  me  full  month's  wages  I'm  wanting." 

"  When  did  you  come,  Decima  ?  "  said  the  Prin 
cess,  who,  during  this  harangue,  had  been  going 
through  a  somewhat  bewildering  mental  calculation, 
in  an  effort  to  divide  twenty-five  sestertia  by  eighteen 
and  had  become  inextricably  entangled  in  the  vul 
gar  fraction  which  confronted  her. 

"  Day  after  to-morrow  three  weeks  and  me  month 
is  up  on  the  sixteenth  it  is,"  said  Decima,  by  way  of 
adding  greater  obscurity  to  the  calculation. 

"  You  came  at  night  and  you  are  going  away,  of 
your  own  accord,  before  dinner,  so  that  you  are 
really  entitled  to  only  eighteen  days  wages  at  the 
rate  of  twenty-five  sestertia  for  the  month,  but  I  will 
call  it  nineteen  days  or  say  twenty,  so  as  to  make  it 
two-thirds  of  a  month," — this  was  a  concession  in 
the  interest  of  the  vulgar  fraction,  as  the  Princess 
saw  that  to  divide  twenty-five  by  nineteen  was  even 
more  hopeless  than  the  attempt  to  divide  it  by 
eighteen,  and  she  caught  at  a  round  number,  as  a 
short  way  out  of  her  difficulty. 

But  she  was  not  yet  clear  of  her  fraction,  for  now 
she  must  divide  twenty-five  by  twenty,  and  she  had 
to  pause  for  a  further  computation. 

"  Well,  Decima,  I  will  pay  you  seventeen  sestertia, 
which  is  more,  a  great  deal  more,  than  is  due  you. 
If  your  wages  were  twenty-four  sertertia,  two-thirds 


ng  DOMESTICUS. 

would  be  sixteen,"  said  the  Little  Lady,  continuing 
her  calculation  aloud,  "and  two-thirds  of  one  sester- 
tium — to  make  twenty-five,  would  be — well,  seventy- 
five  is  near  enough,  and  I  will  call  it  a  sestertium, 
so  here  is  the  money,  and  I  am  sorry  you  are  so 
foolish." 

Decima  had  not  pursued  the  mental,  or  oral  arith 
metic  of  her  mistress.  A  month's  wages,  to  her, 
meant  twenty-five  sestertia — no  more,  nor  less — and 
for  this  amount  in  its  integrity,  she  had  come  to 
make  a  stand,  but  there  was  that  in  the  gesture  of 
the  Princess,  as  she  placed  the  money  in  the 
woman's  hand,  which  showed,  plainly,  that  not  a 
sestertium  or  its  smallest  part,  beyond  the  proffered 
sum,  was  to  be  gained,  by  threat  or  entreaty.  She 
was  as  thoroughly  mistress  of  her  money,  as  of  her 
mansion. 

"And  it's  not  me  month's  wages  I  am  to  get  and 
ye  a  rich  lady  and  it's  the  likes  of  ye  that  rob  poor 
girls  and  a  shame  it  will  be  to  ye  as  long  as  ye  live 
and  its  a  bad  name  I'll  give  ye — it  is — and  I  will," 
and  with  these  mutterings  Decima  closed  her  red 
fingers  on  the  sestertia,  turned  her  back,  and  was 
seen  no  more,  in  the  palace  of  the  Princess. 

The  Prince  came  home  in  great  spirits.  He 
rarely  brought  the  topics  of  his  principality  into  the 
domain  of  home,  but  before  dinner,  on  this  some 
what  eventful  day,  he  told  the  Princess  that  he  had 
been  playing  the  grab  game,  quite  successfully. 
This  was  something  at  which  the  Dry  Goods  Princes 


A  GRANDMOTHER'S  APPLE-PIE.  i  ig 

were  very  expert  when  occasion  required.  In  this 
particular  instance,  as  the  Prince  explained,  a  cer 
tain  unconscionable  scoundrel,  from  a  distant  part 
of  Magna  Patria,  had  contrived,  under  the  guise  of 
innocent  purchases  from  the  Prince,  at  short  credit, 
to  get  into  his  wicked  possession  a  large  quantity  of 
staple  commodities,  without  the  slightest  intention 
of  ever  paying  for  them.  This  was  plainly  shown 
by  his  nefarious  conduct  when  he  got  them  to  his 
far-off  home,  where  he  was  a  large  and  prosperous 
dealer,  as  was  supposed,  but  where  he  suddenly 
shut  his  doors  and  turned  over,  to  a  confederate,  all 
the  property  in  his  possession.  Thereupon,  the 
Prince  had  betaken  himself  to  his  jurisconsults, 
Meum,  Tuum  &  Suum,  who  were  learned  in  all  the 
laws  of  Magna  Patria,  and  knew  the  Pandects, 
Edicts  and  Digests  by  heart,  and  who,  in  their  learn 
ing  and  wisdom,  sent  forth  a  pursuer,  swift  as 
Mercury,  quite  as  unscrupulous,  and  twice  as 
shrewd,  who  pounced  upon  the  defrauding  dealer 
and  his  whole  stock  in  trade,  with  a  mandate,  or 
precept,  known,  in  that  part  of  Magna  Patria  where 
the  goods  were  found,  as  an  attachment.  This 
powerful  mandate  was  placed  in  the  hands  of  a 
lictor,  who  in  speedy  course  of  justice,  by  breaking 
open  doors,  and  seizing  property,  and  making  sales, 
and  otherwise  exerting  the  machinery  of  the  law, 
had  secured  and  got  the  Prince's  whole  debt,  in 
money,  with  interest  and  costs,  and  lictor's  fees  and 
poundage. 

This   last  word  seemed   so  tremendous,  as  the 


1 20  £>  OMESTICUS. 

Prince  gave  it  forth,  by  way  of  climax,  that  the 
Little  Lady,  in  the  tenderness  of  her  heart,  could 
not  help  saying,  she  hoped  they  did  not  pound  the 
poor  fellow  too  hard,  even  if  he  was  so  great  a 
scamp. 

Then  the  Prince  laughed,  and  explained  to  her 
that  poundage  did  not  mean  pounding,  at  all,  but 
meant  the  lictor's  fees,  in  addition  to  his  other  fees. 

"But  why  is  it  called  poundage?"  asked  the 
Princess ;  "  it  seems  a  very  queer  name  for  fees." 

"  I  suppose,"  said  the  Prince,  who,  having  recov 
ered  his  debt,  was  ready  to  take  almost  any  risk  in 
connection  with  this  venture,  "  it  is  because  when 
people  get  into  the  lictor's  hands,  they  are  like  cattle 
in  a  pound,  and  cannot  be  got  out  without  paying." 

This  definition  was  thoroughly  satisfactory  to  the 
Princess,  and  then,  to  show  her  interest  in  the  story, 
and  her  sympathy  with  the  Prince,  in  his  success, 
she  inquired  if  he  found  his  own  goods  on  the 
premises  of  the  rogue. 

"  Yes,"  said  the  Prince ;  then  the  Princess  asked 
why  he  did  not  take  them  back,  instead  of  selling 
the  other  creditors'  goods  and  collecting  the  money. 

The  Prince  seemed,  for  some  reason,  to  think  this 
was  a  capital  joke  and  so  expressed  himself,  and 
laughed  again,  very  heartily,  and  the  Princess 
laughed  too,  to  keep  him  company,  although  she 
could  not  see  the  joke. 

They  sat  down  to  dinner,  and  in  due  course,  the 
apple-pie  made  its  appearance,  and  was  set  before 
tlu  Prince.  Surely  no  one  will  grudge  a  moment's 


A  GRANDMOTHERS  A rrLE-FIE.  j2i 

delay  for  a  description  of  this  historic  pie.  It  was 
embedded  in  a  deep,  round,  yellowish  dish,  the  top 
crust  swelling  slightly  from  the  rim,  tinged  at  every 
point  of  its  periphery  with  the  exuding  juice  of  the 
apple,  its  top  embrowned — not  scorched — with  a 
warmer  wave  of  the  oven  heat,  while,  underneath 
the  flaky  tissues  of  the  outer  covering,  layer  on 
layer,  like  the  leaves  of  a  full-blown  rose,  overlap 
ping  and  crowding  each  other,  yet  each  individual 
and  distinct,  lay  the  amber-colored  segments  of  the 
Spitzenbergs,  clear  and  translucent,  with  no  perfidi 
ous  bottom  crust  to  absorb  their  generous  juices  or 
spoil  their  natural  flavor. 

When  the  pie  was  opened,  the  Prince  began  to 
say: — 

"  Did  Decima  make  this  pie?  " 

"  Decima  has  gone,"  said  the  Princess. 

"A  good  riddance,"  said  the  Prince,  as  he  helped 
the  Princess  to  the  first  piece  of  pie.  "  I  knew  she 
never  made  it." 

"  I  declare,"  said  the  Prince,  as  he  placed  a  por 
tion  on  the  plate  for  Prima,  there  is  apple  in  this  pie, 
which,  for  an  apple-pie,  is  a  most  extraordinary 
thing." 

Then,  as  he  put  his  spoon  down  into  its  depths, 
like  a  mariner  sounding  in  an  unknown  sea,  and 
struck  the  smooth  surface  underneath,  "Upon  my 
word,"  said  the  Prince,  "there  is  no  bottom  crust  to 
this  pie,"  and  he  helped  Secundus  and  Tertia,  re 
spectively,  to  liberal  shares. 

The  Prince  then  provided,  in  due  course,  for  him- 


122  DOMESTICUS. 

self,  and  after  the  first  taste,  he  laid  down  his  knife 
and  fork,  looked  at  the  Princess,  and  exclaimed : — 

"Wonders  will  never  cease!  There  is  no  lemon 
in  this  pie  !  " 

"Of  course  not,"  said  the  Princess. 

"And  the  flavor  is  not  all  cooked  out  of  the 
apples,"  cried  the  Prince.  "They  have  the  real, 
genuine,  Spitzenberg  taste." 

"  Certainly  they  have,"  said  the  Princess. 

"  I  verily  believe  the  age  of  miracles  has  returned," 
said  the  Prince ;  "  this  is  a  grandmother's  apple-pie 
and  no  mistake." 

"Undoubtedly  it  is,"  said  the  Princess. 

"And  who  made  it  ?  "  asked  the  Prince. 

"  I  made  it,"  said  the  Princess. 

There  are  feelings  as  we  all  know,  and  have  been 
taught,  which  cannot  be  expressed  in  words.  The 
Prince's  mouth  was  full ;  his  heart  was  full ;  it  was 
only  necessary  to  complete  his  happiness  that  his 
plate  should  be  full.  He  said  nothing,  but  helped 
himself  to  the  rest,  residue,  and  remainder  of  the  pie. 

"  You  seem  to  be  playing  the  '  grab  game '  on  my 
pie,"  said  the  Little  Lady,  gaily. 

"  Yes,"  said  the  Prince,  "  I  have  an  '  attachment ' 
for  it." 

And  he  laughed,  heartily,  at  this  little  joke,  and 
so  did  they  all.  Not  because  there  was  the  least 
merit  in  the  joke,  but  because,  when  people  are  in 
high  good  humor,  they  will  laugh  at  almost  any 
thing. 

The  Little  Lady  had  her  own  quiet  source  of 


A  GRANDMOTHERS  APPLE-PIE.  ^3 

amusement,  in  the  belief,  in  the  very  depths  of  her 
honest  heart,  that  the  Prince's  grandmother  had 
never,  in  the  whole  course  of  her  long  and  exem 
plary  life,  made  a  pie  half  as  good  as  her  own,  but 
she  was  satisfied  with  things  as  they  were,  and  per 
fectly  willing  to  be  placed,  by  the  Prince,  in  a  niche 
on  the  same  level  with  his  grandmother,  in  his 
Walhalla,  or  special  shrine,  of  famous  pie-makers. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

GLORIOSA. 

AMONG  the  votaries  and  high  priestesses  of  that 
all-powerful  divinity,  Societas,  none  were  more 
conspicuous  in  the  Imperial  City  than  the  Princess 
Gloriosa.  Older  by  only  a  couple  of  years  than 
Prima,  she  was  a  millenium  in  advance  of  her  in  all 
the  ways  of  the  world.  Brought  up  together  as 
playmates  and  schoolmates,  Gloriosa  had  married, 
at  an  early  age,  and  was  soon  established  as  a  recog 
nized  social  power,  by  virtue  of  her  beauty,  her 
wit,  her  vivacity,  her  force  of  will,  and  the  supposed 
wealth  of  her  husband,  Novus,  a  daring  and  adven 
turous  youth,  believed  to  be  one  of  the  special 
favorites  of  Fortune,  and  endowed  with  a  faculty 
kindred  to  the  fabled  gift  by  which  Midas  could 
turn  everything  he  touched  into  gold. 

Gloriosa,  before  her  marriage,  had  known  very 
little  about  gold,  or  any  other  circulating  medium, 
except  by  description,  and  that,  for  the  most  part, 
in  works  of  the  imagination  and  fancy.  Her  widowed 
mother,  whose  better  days  in  the  past,  furnished 
supplies  only  for  memory  and  melancholy  retro 
spect,  found  her  sole  solace  in  the  possibilities  of  a 
splendid  future  for  Gloriosa ;  and  she  made  every 
124 


GLOR/OS.1. 


I25 


sacrifice  to  gain  for  her  a  firm  footing  on  the  slippery 
pathway  into  the  sanctuary  of  the  gilded  goddess. 
Once  initiated,  she  needed  no  support  from  other 
votaries,  or  fellow-worshipers.  She  was  a  ready 
adept  in  all  the  arts  and  graces  which  were  needed 
f«>r  the  service  in  \\hich  she  had  engaged,  and  when 
Novus,  with  all  his  rapidly  made  wealth,  was  wedded 
to  Gloriosa,  with  all  her  speedily  acquired  promi 
nence,  there  was  a  general  feeling  in  the  charmed 
circle  that  the  race  had  indeed  been  to  the  swift,  and 
that  a  rightful  leadership  had  been  established. 

The  Little  Lady  had  permitted,  if  not  encouraged, 
a  continuance  of  the  early  intimacy  between  the 
two  friends,  partly,  because  it  offered  to  Prima  some 
opportunities  of  enjoyment,  of  which  she  might 
otherwise  have  been  deprived,  and  partly,  because 
her  nature  was  so  retiring  and  contemplative  that 
it  needed  something  of  the  stimulus  which  the 
ardent  world-wisdom  of  Gloriosa  was  calculated  to 
impart. 

Prima,  at  this  time,  coeval  with  the  outbreak  of 
the  strife  for  the  Sisterhood,  was  nearly  out  of  her 
teens ;  to  borrow  the  charming  refrain  of  a  stray 
song,  in  a  noble  English  drama : — 

"  She  was  fresh  and  she  was  fair, 
Glossy  was  her  golden  hair, 
Like  a  blue  sjx>t  in  the  sky, 
Was  her  clear  and  loving  eye." 

And  yet  opinions  differed  as  to  her  claim  to  beauty. 
Many  critics,  of  her  QWII  se^  denied  it  absolutely. 


I26  DO  ME  STIC  US. 

She  lacked  height ;  she  lacked  pose ;  she  had  fault 
less  teeth,  but  her  mouth  was  too  large;  her  features 
were  irregular,  her  nose  was  not  of  the  true  classic 
type ;  and  what  so  many  people  found  in  her  to 
admire,  they  could  not,  for  their  lives,  divine.  The 
claim  to  rank  as  a  beauty  was  one  which  Prima  had 
never  dreamed  of  asserting  on  her  own  behalf,  nor 
had  she  the  least  suspicion  that  it  was  put  forward 
by  anyone  in  her  interest,  and  she  would  have  been 
greatly  surprised  had  she  come  to  the  knowledge 
that  it  was,  in  fact,  a  vexed  question,  stirred  with 
many  cups  of  afternoon  tea,  and  often  started 
afresh  at  the  moment  of  her  entrance  into  some 
gay  scene,  where  the  rites  of  Societas  were  in  festal 
progress. 

Gloriosa,  however,  was  never  tired  of  declaring 
that  Prima  was  "  simply  perfect,"  and  this  was  the 
true  verdict  of  the  majority  of  voices  apt  to  echo 
her  own.  But,  in  the  same  breath,  she  would  admit 
that  Prima  would  never  shine  as  a  satellite  in  the 
bright,  planetary  system  of  Societas.  In  spite  of 
her  opportunities,  she  would  not  dance  to  all  the 
piping  of  the  priestesses.  Cinderella's  slipper  would 
have  cut  no  figure  on  her  dainty  foot.  The  cardinal 
doctrine  of  Societas,  that  all  youth  and  beauty  are 
predestinated  to  the  round  dance,  by  inevitable 
decree,  she  heretically  rejected,  and  while  Gloriosa 
mourned  over  her  defection,  consigning  her,  more  in 
sorrow  than  in  anger,  to  the  penal  sufferance  and 
durance  vile  of  the  slow-footed  sect  of  the  wall 
flowers,  she  still  hovered  and  buzzed  over  her,  like  a 


GLORIOSA. 


127 


magnificent  and  many-colored  butterfly  above  a 
wee,  modest,  field  flower. 

Gloriosa  herself  was  a  full-orbed  beauty,  of  a 
somewhat  aggressive  type.  She  was  taller  than 
I'rinia  ;  she  filled  more  space  ;  her  voice  was  pitched 
on  a  higher  key;  her  eyes  were  more  of  a  Juno 
gray  than  of  the  true  cerulean  blue ;  her  luxuriant 
tresses  wore  a  heavier  imprint  than  the  golden- 
tinted  locks  of  Prima,  and  seemed  of  a  somewhat 
baser  metal.  She  was,  generally,  of  a  larger  pat 
tern,  and  her  views  were  on  a  correspondingly  lib 
eral  scale.  She  was  indefatigable  in  the  discharge 
of  her  duties,  in  the  service  of  Societas.  Her 
responsibilities  were  simply  enormous.  Her  visiting 
list  was  like  a  Bank  Ledger.  Her  engagements 
were  scheduled  and  tabulated  with  the  precision  of 
a  Bureau  of  Statistics.  Her  entertainments  were 
organized  with  the  detail  of  a  military  campaign. 
She  had  a  vast  army  of  subordinates,  from  the 
humblest  camp-follower,  who  was  glad  to  get  an 
occasional  card  for  a  fifth-rate  reception,  to  her 
staff  officers,  who  led  the  Grecian  in  every  gay 
saloon,  and  whose  gilded  chariots  waited  before  her 
palace  gates. 

To  tell  the  plain  truth,  if  ever  there  was  a  false 
goddess  and  sham  divinity,  it  was  this  same  Socie 
tas.  Time  was,  when  her  shrine  and  her  service 
meant  something  of  value  to  the  community,  as 
well  as  to  her  immediate  votaries.  In  those  earlier 
days,  her  precincts  were  guarded  closely  and  with 
jealous  care.  Moat  and  drawbridge  had  to  be 


I28  DOMESTICUS. 

passed,  portcullis  raised,  and  watchword  duly  given, 
before  access  could  be  gained  to  her  citadel,  or  her 
sanctuary,  nor  could  any  one  be  admitted  to  her 
higher  mysteries  and  privileges  without  due  scrutiny, 
and  test,  and  full  performance  of  all  required  lustra 
tions.  But  now,  the  ancient  landmarks  had  been 
rudely  broken  down,  and  the  great  sacred  circle  of 
Societas  came  to  resemble  the  modern  circus  tent, 
where  every  one  is  welcome  who  can  pay  the 
entrance  money,  and  a  penniless  straggler,  now  and 
then,  contrives  to  crawl  in  under  the  flap.  The 
decay  dated  from  the  time  when,  by  an  edict  issued 
in  her  name,  the  test  of  admission  to  her  inner 
courts  was  changed  from  weight  of  character  to 
weight  of  purse,  and  soon  thereafter  a  wild  horde 
of  new-made  plutocrats,  covered  with  the  slime  of 
Pactolus,  came  trampling  into  the  sacred  enclosure. 
The  great  aim  of  the  worship  of  Societas,  as 
organized  by  her  votaries,  was  to  destroy  whatever 
was  natural,  and  replace  it  by  whatever  was  artifi 
cial.  They  registered  vows  to  substitute  the  con 
ventional  for  the  true,  and  their  whole  lives  were 
devoted  to  this  end  with  the  all-consuming  energy 
of  zealots.  They  had  no  written  code,  but  their 
prescripts,  like  the  Common  Law  of  England,  were 
a  vast  body  of  rules,  understood  by  those  who 
enforced  them,  applied  according  to  their  own  inter 
pretation,  and,  very  largely,  embedded  in  customs 
as  inviolate  as  law.  Thus  the  declaration  at  the 
door  of  a  patrician  dame  to  an  inquiring  visitor — 
"Not  at  home" — was  a  conventionalism,  which,  being 


12g 

interpreted,  meant  that  she  was  at  home,  but  did 
not  choose  to  admit  visitors.  This  serviceable  con 
trivance  \ve  may  easily  suppose  to  have  been  origin 
ated  by  Domesticus,  who  drew  his  sustenance 
largely  from  Societas,  because  it  gave  him  such  a 
safe  precedent  for  carrying  a  convenient  amount  of 
conventionalism  into  butlers'  pantries,  and  other 
places,  and  laying  his  deflections  from  truth  at  the 
front  door  of  his  mistress. 

Having  thus  caused  Truth  to  fall  in  the  street,  or 
on  the  front  steps  leading  thereto,  she  was  easily 
defeated  even  where  else.  In  current  interchanges 
of  civility ;  in  the  acceptance  or  regret  of  proffered 
hospitality;  in  the  exchange  of  courtesies;  in  the 
bestowal  of  gifts;  in  the  endless  round  of  commu 
nications,  the  great  law  of  conventionality  was 
supreme.  From  this  lower  grade  of  purely  human 
affairs,  the  ascent  to  open  hostility  against  the 
established  order  of  Nature  was  easy.  Societas, 
like  Milton's  Satan,  hated  the  sun,  and  was  as  bent 
on  turning  Night  into  Day  as  ever  that  arch  enemy 
was  in  making  Evil  a  substitute  for  Good.  It  was 
one  of  her  prime  and  absolute  requirements  that 
the  best  energies  of  her  followers  should  be  devoted 
to  this  end.  Her  high  festivities  must  always  begin 
about  the  time  that  the  human  race,  in  general,  wants 
to  go  to  bed,  and  terminate  a  little  before  the  time 
appointed  to  the  sons  of  men  to  rise  and  go  forth 
to  their  daily  labor.  To  this  law  everything  mu.st 
icrificed;  the  peace  and  order  of  families ;  the 
bloom  and  beauty  of  maidenhood ;  the  vigor  and 
9 


DOMESTIC  US. 

strength  of  early  manhood.  True,  the  fair  votaress 
might  float  away,  in  her  gossamer  wraps,  in  the 
small  morning  hours,  to  unbroken  slumber  pro 
tracted  to  midday,  and  deem  this  a  full  equivalent 
for  the  rejected  sleep  which  the  night  had  prof 
fered,  a  delusion,  sure  to  be  dispelled  sooner  or 
later,  perhaps  too  late.  True,  her  attendant  cava 
lier  might  think  his  stock  of  strength  enabled  him 
to  make  the  brief  rest — caught  between  the  end  of 
the  night's  revel  and  the  beginning  of  the  day's 
work — suffice  to  furnish  him  for  the  exactions  of  his 
calling,  or,  if  exempt  from  labor,  he  might  suppose 
that  in  the  vacuity,  or  idleness,  or  varied  sports  of 
the  daytime,  he  could  recruit  his  energies  for  the 
ever-recurring,  nightly  treadmill  of  gayety.  But,  in 
reality,  the  whole  system  was  a  long  crusade 
against  Nature  and  natural  law,  kept  up  with  cease 
less  vigilance  and  fanatical  zeal  by  the  standing 
army  of  Societas,  whose  veterans,  decorated  with 
diamonds  and  lace,  tottered  in  the  glare  of  the  mid 
night  lamps,  and  whose  recruits,  bright  with  the 
radiance  of  youth,  were  willing  to  risk  everything 
in  her  perilous  service. 

"Why  cannot  people  enjoy  themselves  at  rea 
sonable  hours  ?  "  said  Prima,  one  day,  to  Gloriosa, 
when  she  made  her  an  unusually  early  visit,  and 
the  conversation  had  begun  with  a  glowing  account 
of  a  recent  high  festival  of  Societas.  "  You  wonder 
that  I  avoid  your  grand  crushes.  It  is  not  because 
I  do  not  like  being  among  so  many  people — on 
the  contrary — I  find  a  vast  deal  of  amusement  and 


GLORIOSA.  ,3, 

entertainment,  but  I  am  an  absentee,  simply  and 
solely,  because  I  prefer  to  be  abed  and  asleep 
between  midnight  and  morning. 

"  My  dear  Prima,  you  talk  like  a  Spartan  grand 
mother.  Would  you  do  your  dancing  by  daylight?  " 

41  No,"  said  Prima,  "  but  the  very  little  dancing  I 
do,  I  should  like  the  privilege  of  doing  before  bed 
time.  It  may  be  Spartan  grandmotherliness,  but 
more  than  half  the  ways  of  Societas  seem  to  me 
not  only  absurd,  but  absolutely  wrong." 

"  Go  on,  Prima,  you  look  so  pretty  when  you  are 
preaching." 

"  I  can't  help  it  if  I  do,  but  if  ever  I  had  an 
authentic  call  to  preach,  I  should  not  waste  it  on 
you  or  any  of  the  case-hardened,  high-heeled  priest 
esses.  I  only  wish  you  had  sense  enough  for  a 
new  departure.  You  could  do  a  world  of  good, 
and  make  yourself  immortal,  if  you  had  the  will  and 
the  courage  to  head  a  revolution  against  these  de 
structive,  unnatural  hours,  but  I  know  you  will 
never  do  it." 

"  Never,  indeed  !  the  very  thought  of  such  a  thing 
is  high  treason ;  the  first  vow  of  my  novitiate  bound 
me  to  renounce  everything  reasonable,  natural,  and 
sensible,  where  it  contravened  the  edicts  of  Societas, 
and  I  mean  to  live  up  to  my  professions.  But,  my 
precious  Prima,  I  came  this  morning  on  a  special 
errand,  from  which  our  discussion  must  not  divert 
me.  Who  is  this  Juventus  I  am  hearing  so  much 
about? " 

With  this  question,  Gloriosa  darted  a  keen,  inqui- 


1^2  DO  ME  STIC  US. 

sitive  glance  at  Prima.  Her  shot,  whether  at  a 
venture  or  with  deliberate  aim,  hit  the  mark,  if 
blushes  are  a  true  index,  and  it  was  followed  by 
a  second,  before  Prima  had  rallied  from  the  effect 
of  the  first. 

"  Is  it  true  that  he  is  a  machinist  and  works  in  a 
factory  ?  " 

"  He  works  for  his  living,  as  most  men  do,  who 
are  of  any  account." 

"  But  does  he  work  for  wages,  like  ordinary 
laborers — like  Domesticus  ?  " 

"  I  suppose,"  said  Prima,  very  quietly,  having 
regained  entire  self-possession,  "  he  works  for  pay, 
just  as  the  ediles,  and  praetors,  and  jurisconsults, 
do.  Why  not  ?  " 

"  Oh,  certainly,  the  laborer  is  worthy  of  his  hire. 
It  was  his  social  measure  I  wanted  to  take,  and 
to  ascertain,  if  I  could,  how  he  came  to  find  favor 
in  your  blue  eyes.  Did  he  come  here  to  mend  the 
water  pipes  or  tune  the  organ  pipes  ?" 

"He  came  here  to  dinner,  on  papa's  invitation, 
with  the  other  wizards  of  the  Imperial  Society  for 
the  Maintenance  of  the  Solar  System.  You  know 
about  them,  I  presume  ?  " 

"  Oh,  yes,  they  walk  in  the  clouds  and  discourse 
about  the  sun.  They  maintain  a  great  deal  of  eat 
ing,  and  drinking,  and  discussing,  but  I  don't  believe 
it  affects  the  solar  system  the  least  bit." 

"  Very  well,  papa  had  them  to  dinner,  and  Juven- 
tus,  being  the  youngest  wizard,  took  me  out." 

"And  then,  presumably,  you  had  cube  roots  for 


GLORIOSA.  I33 

Iwrs  a\cui*rcst  and  conic  sections  for  a  piece  de 
resistance." 

"  No,  we  talked  about  a  great  many  things,  much 
more  interesting,  your  sweet  self  for  example,  and 
I  told  him  the  story  of  your  symposium  when  the 
lady  guests  pocketed  the  gold  salt-cellars,  at  their 
plates,  on  the  pretext  that,  like  favors  at  the  Gre 
cian,  they  were  to  be  reduced  to  possession,  and 
carried  off,  at  the  close  of  the  entertainment." 

"An  excellent  story,"  said  Gloriosa,  "to  be  taken 
with  as  many  grains  of  salt  as  there  were  in  the 
salt-cellars.  Not  a  word  of  truth  in  it.  But,  cer 
tainly,  I  can  afford  to  have  it  told  if  my  guests  can, 
and  to  be  talked  about  is  the  first  step  toward  fame. 
To  become  a  dinner  table  topic  is  half  the  battle." 

"  And  you  are  always  my  favorite  topic.  I  de 
scribed  to  him  your  Etruscan  room,  which  is  so  far 
in  advance  of  everything,  but  I  didn't  dare  tell  him 
how  much  the  ceiling  cost." 

"  If  it  ever  needs  repairing,  I  will  send  for  him. 
Tell  me,  Prima,  do  you  know  anything  about  his 
antecedents  ?  What  are  his  belongings  ?  Who  are 
his  people  ?" 

"  His  people  are  ship  builders,  way  off,  on  the 
coast  of  Dirigo." 

"  Oh,  a  mechanic  and  the  son  of  a  mechanic ! " 

"  Yes,  but  he  is  not  an  ordinary  mechanic.  He 
is  very  highly  educated." 

"  So  is  my  chef,"  said  Gloriosa,  "  he  speaks  three 
languages,  and  cooks  in  seven,  and,  I  dare  say,  has 
higher  wages  than  your  prodigy,  who  may  be  a 


DOMESTICUS. 

wonderful  workman  and  a  wonderful  wizard,  but  we 
cannot  let  down  the  bars  for  such  as  he." 

"  There  is  certainly  no  need,"  said  Prima.  "  He 
is  inside  already." 

"  It  is  quite  out  of  the  question,"  persisted  Glori- 
osa,  "  a  working-man  may  have  all  the  education 
you  please ;  it  will  help  him  in  his  place  and,  per 
haps,  help  him  to  rise  from  it ;  but  as  long  as  he 
stays  in  it,  how  can  he  possibly  have  any  social 
position  ?  " 

"  Surely,"  said  Prima,  "  his  education  entitles  him 
to  position,  just  as  much,  if  riot  a  great  deal  more, 
than  the  money  of  a  rich  man  who  can  hardly  write 
or  spell  his  own  name.  Besides,  there  is  a  vast  dif 
ference  in  work.  His  is  not  menial  or  servile,  in 
any  sense,  but  of  the  highest  kind,  requiring  brain 
and  talent,  and  even  genius,  like  the  work  of  the  old- 
time  bridge-builders.  What  does  Pontifex  Maximus 
mean  except  the  greatest  of  bridge-builders  ?  " 

"  That  is  all  very  fine,  if  we  are  to  go  back  a 
thousand  years,  or  so.  I  dare  say  the  mound- 
builders  were  equally  distinguished  in  their  day 
and  generation,  but  the  kind  of  worth  that  makes 
the  man,  now,  is  not  his  being  able  to  work,  but  his 
being  able  to  do  without  work.  Societas  has  settled 
all  that,  and  she  will  rule  out  Juventus.  No  gentle 
man  works  with  his  hands." 

"  Then  I  renounce  all  my  allegiance  to  Societas," 
said  Prima,  with  unwonted  spirit  in  her  tone  and 
look.  "  What  is  there  to-day  of  any  real  value, 
except  labor,  or  what  labor  has  created  ?  Did  you 


GLORIOSA.  !35 

ever  think,  Gloriosa,  that  if  the  men  and  women  who 
do  the  work  of  the  world,  outdoors  and  indoors, 
were,  all  at  once,  to  stop  working,  the  whole  race 
would  starve,  as  soon  as  they  had  eaten  up  what 
was  left  in  the  larders?  A  gold  heap  or  a  silver 
heap  would  be  no  better  then  than  a  dust  heap.  You 
are  living  every  moment  by  some  one's  labor  and  \vt 
you  despise  the  laborer.  I  will  take  back  what  I 
said  about  differences  in  work.  All  work  is  good, 
and  true,  and  noble,  if  the  aim  and  the  end  are 
right." 

Gloriosa  thought  she  could  divine  the  possible 
source  of  Prima's  heretical  declarations,  but  she  was 
in  earnest  when  she  said  that  she  liked  to  hear  her 
preach,  and  so  she  chose  to  fan  the  flame  she  had 
kindled. 

"  And  when  this  somewhat  improbable  catastrophe 
takes  place,  and  everybody  stops  working  all  at  once 
(except  Juventus,  for,  if  he  is  what  you  paint  him, 
I  suppose  he  will  keep  on  all  the  same),  what  par 
ticular  branch  of  industry  do  you  propose  to  take 
up?" 

"  Oh,  I  will  come  and  teach  you  plain  sewing  and 
ever  so  many  other  useful  arts,"  said  Prima,  fright 
ened  at  her  little  flight  into  the  region  of  political 
economy,  and  making  haste  to  get  back  to  the 
proper  level  of  parlor  platitudes. 

"Prima,"  said  Gloriosa,  solemnly,  "  I  really  and 
truly  believe  you  are  in  love  with  Juventus.  You 
must  promise  me  one  thing,  on  your  sacred  word 
and  honor.  If  he  asks  you  to  marry  him,  say  '  No.' " 


136 


DOMESTIC  US. 


"  But  I  have  said  '  Yes  '  already." 
"  When  ?  "  shrieked  Gloriosa. 
"Yesterday,"  said  Prima. 

"  Unhappy  giri !     It  was  only  yesterday  I  heard 
he  was  going  to  the  war." 
"  So  he  is." 

"  And  when  may  that  be  ?  " 
"  To-morrow,"  said  Prima. 

There  was  a  pause.  Gloriosa  was  quick  of  wit, 
and  her  thoughts  came  and  went  with  rapidity.  If 
Juventus  were  going  to  the  war,  he  might  be  killed, 
or  he  might  come  back  at  the  head  of  a  legion.  In 
either  case,  he  would  be  a  hero.  It  was  a  chance 
for  an  epitaph  or  a  brace  of  epaulettes.  A  military 
record  would  wipe  out  the  stain  of  the  workshop. 
At  all  events,  Prima  would  have  her  own  way,  and 
why  not  make  a  virtue  of  necessity,  and  take  them 
both  under  her  protecting  wing. 

Prima,  meanwhile,  was  more  stunned  by  her  own 
announcement  than  the  friend  to  whom  it  had  been 
made.  She  was  barely  regaining  full  consciousness, 
when  she  felt  herself  in  the  tight  embrace  of  Glori 
osa,  whose  stout  arms,  encased  in  their  many-but 
toned  gloves,  were  clasped  about  her,  and  their  re 
united  hearts  were  again  beating  in  unison,  as  they 
basked  in  the  glow  of  that  incommunicable  rapture 
with  which  the  secret  of  a  fresh  engagement  never 
fails  to  suffuse  the  spirit  of  the  gentler  sex. 


w 


CHAPTER   XIV. 

GOING   TO    THE    FRONT. 

HAT  Prima  told  Gloriosa  was  the  whole  truth. 
Juventus  had  found  a  friendly  reception 
and  a  continuing  welcome  under  the  roof  of  the 
Prince,  from  the  time  of  his  first  introduction,  in 
the  train  of  the  scientists. 

He  soon  became  a  favored  guest. 

The  Princess  had  seen  him  render  a  casual  act  of 
courtesy,  in  a  public  place,  at  some  personal  incon 
venience,  to  an  elderly  dame,  and  this  incident,  even 
more  than  his  deferential  bearing  toward  herself, 
gave  him  an  exceptional  standing  in  her  good 
opinion,  in  view  of  the  lamentable  decline,  which 
she  affirmed  to  exist,  in  the  respect  paid  by  youth 
to  age. 

The  Prince  liked  his  coming,  because,  as  he  said, 
the  young  man  always  told  him  something  he  did 
not  know  before. 

Secundus,  the  bright  princclet  of  the  family,  was 
helped  by  Juventus  out  of  many  of  the  snares  and 
pitfalls,  filled  with  deceptive  signs  and  delusive  fig 
ures,  into  which  the  pedagogues  delighted  to  lead 
unwary  youthful  adventurers  in  the  path  of 
knowledge. 


^3  DO  ME  STIC  US. 

He  had  won  the  heart  of  little  Tertia  by  a 
marvelous  restoration  of  the  scattered  members  of 
her  favorite  doll,  after  a  catastrophe  which  had 
seemed  fatal  to  its  curiously  contrived  existence. 

Even  more  than  to  any  one  else  in  the  house 
hold,  was  he  an  object  of  admiration,  almost  of 
worship,  to  Stella,  the  special  ministrant  with  whom 
Domesticus  had  invested  Prima.  She  thought 
Juventus  had  saved  her  life.  In  fact,  he  had  stepped 
opportunely,  between  her  and  possible,  if  not  prob 
able,  death.  As  he  was  going  his  round  in  one  of 
the  workshops,  where  she  tended  a  machine,  a 
sudden  break  threw  the  mechanism  out  of  gear,  and 
she  was  in  danger  of  being  caught  and  fearfully 
maimed  in  the  whirl  of  the  disorganized  and 
destructive  mass.  Juventus,  by  a  sudden  and 
timely  act,  had  snatched  her  from  this  dangerous 
plight,  just  at  the  moment  of  a  crash  which  might 
have  been  fatal.  This  accident  so  affected  her 
nervous  system  that  she  could  not  safely  return  to 
machine  work,  and  when  he  told  the  story  to  the 
Princess,  she  made  a  place  for  the  girl  in  her 
household.  She  waited  on  Prima,  giving  a  great 
deal  of  uninstructed,  but  willing  service,  and  a 
great  deal  of  trouble  in  her  unregulated  methods 
of  mind  and  manners,  but,  in  spite  of  all  these  short 
comings,  finding  sympathy  in  the  kind  hearts  of  her 
mistresses. 

To  Prima,  Juventus  seemed  unlike  most  young 
men,  and  this,  she  thought,  was  all  she  thought 
about  him. 


GOING  TO  THE  FRONT. 

Meanwhile,  Juventus  found  himself  thinking  more 
and  more  about  Prima,  until,  after  the  old  fashion 
whereby  human  hearts  are  entwined  and  human 
destinies  interwoven,  there  was  nothing  in  the  wide 
universe  for  him,  in  sentiment,  in  resolve,  in  action; 
in  the  seeing  of  the  eye,  the  hearing  <>f  the  ear,  the 
imagining  of  the  heart,  which  did  not  seem  to  draw 
its  vital  breath  from  this  bright  ideal.  His  plans 
and  purposes  found  a  new  inspiration  and  a  new 
motive,  and  he  seemed  to  himself  to  have  come,  all 
at  once,  within  a  single  step  of  the  summit  of  hap 
piness. 

Juventus,  as  he  worked  and  walked,  and  slept 
and  waked,  carried  with  him  this  thought  of  Prima, 
which  he  could  not  dissever  from  another  and 
earlier  thought,  whose  first  access  had  filled  him 
with  an  intense  ardor,  kindred  to  that  which  now 
stirred  his  soul  with  the  throbbings  of  a  new  affec 
tion.  To  the  love  of  country,  this  added  love 
seemed  only  a  later  and  more  perfect  outgrowth 
from  one  native  stock.  The  same  chord  of  his 
nature  vibrated  to  the  touch  of  loyalty  and  love. 

At  last,  out  of  a  myriad  of  glimmering,  con 
fused,  and  intermingled  certainties  and  uncertainties, 
and  hopes  and  fears,  vast  and  vague  as  the  unre 
solved  nebulae  of  Andromeda,  a  clear  and  bright 
resolve  fashioned  itself  in  his  mind,  and  was  wrought 
into  shape  as  follows  : — 

"JUVENTUS  TO  PRIMA,  Greeting: 

<l  It  has  been  the  desire  of  my  heart,  ever  since 


140 


DO  ME  STIC  US. 


that  first  firing  on  the  flag,  to  volunteer  and  go  to 
the  front 

"When  the  great  Flamen,  whose  words  have 
always  been  as  oracles  to  me,  declared  that  the 
strife  would  be  ended  in  sixty  days,  I  was  willing 
to  wait  Now,  that  it  seems  as  if  the  truer  prophecy 
was  that  other  word,  for  uttering  which  a  brave 
man  was  sneered  at  as  a  lunatic,  that  three  hundred 
thousand  men  would  be  needed  to  save  the  Sister 
hood,  I  must  be  one  of  them.  The  call  seems 
plain  to  me,  and  there  are  some  good  and  true 
men  who  will  also  go,  if  I  go.  And  I  must  go  at 
once,  if  at  all.  The  one  thing  I  want  to  carry  with 
me  is  your  heart  A  man  who  in  facing  danger,  per 
haps  death,  and  who  turns  his  back  on  a  career  just 
entered  upon,  and  a  livelihood  barely  secured,  has, 
I  know  full  well,  no  right  to  ask  the  sacrifice  I 
solicit  from  you,  even  could  he  count  on  the  affec 
tion  which  might  make  it  possible.  Yet  I  must 
venture  all,  knowing  that  you  have  courage  and 
faith,  and  believing  that  I  can  make  you  happy,  if 
only  you  can  return  my  love. 

"  Do  not  write ;  I  will  come  this  evening." 

The  earlier  portion  of  this  missive  told  no  news 
to  Prima.  She  had  known,  well  enough,  that 
Juventus  would  go  to  the  war.  She  had  hoped  this 
and  feared  it,  and  feared  it  and  hoped  it,  and  then 
tried,  in  vain,  to  persuade  herself  that  she  neither 
feared  nor  hoped  it,  nor  in  fact  cared  at  all — and 
yet  she  was  certain  he  would  go. 


GOING  TO   THE  l-RONT.  I4I 

The  latter  part  of  the  letter  was  a  genuine  sur 
prise.  She  had  not  brought  herself  to  the  point  of 
looking  on  Juventus  as  a  lover.  She  only  knew 
that  she  was  happy  in  his  society,  that  she  looked 
forward,  with  pleasure,  to  his  coming,  that  she 
missed  his  absence,  and  that  was  all,  absolutely  all. 

Nevertheless,  there  was  not  an  instant  of  doubt 
in  her  heart,  as  to  her  response.  To  have  the  love 
of  a  brave,  true  soul,  such  as  his,  was  a  treasure  in 
itself,  and  a  warrant  for  all  risks.  Prima  did  not 
hesitate  or  delay.  She  sat,  for  a  few  minutes,  in  the 
stillness  of  her  happy  thoughts,  and  then  went  to  her 
mother,  placed  the  letter  in  her  hands  and  knelt 
before  her.  Presently,  there  was  a  locked  embrace ; 
a  beating  of  hearts  close  to  one  another;  and  a 
season  of  silent  weeping,  which  he  may  attempt  to 
describe  who  can  analyze  a  mother's  tears,  or  fathom 
the  depths  of  a  daughter's  love. 

That  night  Juventus  came,  and  as  the  slight  figure 
of  Prima,  in  spotless  white,  moved  towards  him 
through  the  dimly  lighted  space  which  she  seemed 
to  fill  with  sudden  radiance,  almost  before  he  could 
discern  her  features  he  caught  sight  of  the  blended 
colors  in  the  silken  girdle  which  bound  her  waist, 
the  red,  white  and  blue.  He  asked  nothing  more. 
This  mute,  inarticulate  "  yes,"  breathed  in  the 
symbol  of  the  cause  he  was  going  forth  to  serve, 
gave  him  the  answer  for  which  he  had  hardly  dared 
to  hope,  and  with  the  confirming  clasp  of  the  tiny, 
trembling  hand  he  rushed  forward  to  claim  as  his 
own,  no  word  was  needed,  and  no  word  was  given. 


142 


DO  ME  STIC  US. 


The  Prince  was  somewhat  slow  to  acquiesce  in 
the  arrangements  of  the  young  people.  He  thought 
the  whole  thing  was  premature.  In  a  general  way, 
he  believed  in  the  future  of  Juventus,  just  as  he 
believed  in  the  eventual  success  of  a  great  many 
enterprises  which  yielded  no  immediate  return.  He 
was  opposed  to  his  going  to  the  war,  because,  in 
reality,  he  was  opposed  to  the  war;  but  he  knew 
that  he  could  no  more  stop  him  than  he  could 
hinder  the  great  rivers,  which  flowed  past  the  Im 
perial  City,  from  emptying  into  the  ocean. 

He  could  not  help  thinking  the  war  needless. 
It  should  have  been  prevented,  in  some  way, 
he  did  not  know  how.  He  was  afraid  it  would  be 
a  failure.  He  doubted  whether  it  would  be  worth 
what  it  cost.  Of  course,  he  was  for  maintaining 
the  Sisterhood.  There  was  no  other  alternative, 
but  like  so  many  of  his  class  in  private  stations  and 
so  many  in  public  positions,  he  was  in  opposition  to 
every  measure  to  maintain  it.  He  could  see  nothing 
certain  about  the  war  in  its  continuance,  except  its 
expense,  and  nothing  definite  in  its  results,  except 
disaster.  He  was  not  in  a  frame  of  mind  to  take 
very  kindly  to  what  seemed  to  him  to  be  giving  an 
inopportune  preference  to  sentiment  over  sound 
judgment.  Still,  the  time  was  very  short,  owing  to 
the  necessity  of  immediate  acceptance  by  Juventus 
of  an  offered  position  which  assured  him  speedy 
active  service.  The  household  party  of  sentiment 
seemed  to  be  fully  organized  and  in  the  ascendant ; 
and  he  was  not  the  man  to  stand  in  the  way  of  plans 


(,W.V(;    TO   THE  FRONT. 


143 


as  to  which  the  Princess  and  Prima  were  fully  in 
accord.  But,  for  reasons  of  his  own,  he  was  sorry 
there  was  need  of  haste,  and  specially  sorry  for  the 
baleful  cause  of  the  haste,  the  strife  of  the  Sister 
hood. 

The  eve  of  the  departure  of  Juventus  was  filled 
up  with  many  momentous  affairs.  Going  to  the 
front  had  ceased  to  be  a  holiday  excursion.  It 
was  as  serious  a  business  as  a  man  could  enter  upon, 
and  in  spite  of  the  new-found  happiness  which 
Juventus  and  Prima  shared,  the  cloud  of  the  im 
pending  separation,  with  its  unknown  risks  and 
dangers,  hung  over  them. 

The  children  were  sorely  perplexed.  Their  satis 
faction  at  having  Juventus,  with  all  his  wonderful 
arts,  an  actual  member  of  the  family,  was  intense. 
It  was  like  catching  a  live  conjurer  and  keeping  him 
in  a  cage.  But  they  were  disconsolate  at  the 
thought  of  his  leaving  them,  even  though  carried 
off,  to  their  fancy,  in  a  blaze  of  military  glory. 

Stella,  who  had  been  violent  in  her  rejoicing  at  a 
union  which  she  attributed  mainly  to  her  own  in 
cessant  prayers  for  such  a  result,  was  ready  with 
certain  consecrated  amulets  and  charms  which  were 
to  render  Juventus  bullet-proof,  sabre-proof,  and 
bomb-proof. 

The  Prince  and  Princess  were  busied  with  many 
and  various  thoughts  of  their  own,  and  Juventus  and 
Prima  found  the  evening  hours  too  short  for  what  it 
wa  -  in  their  hearts  to  say.  They  made  as  manyprom- 
ises,and  protestations,  and  plans,  as  could  be  crowded 


DOMESTICUS. 

into  the  fast  flying  moments,  and  wasted  some  pre 
cious  time,  rather  foolishly,  but  prettily,  in  selecting, 
out  of  all  the  twinkling  stars  with  which  the  sky 
was  sprinkled,  one  bright  particular  orb,  in  respect 
whereof  they  would  bind  themselves,  by  solemn 
league  and  covenant,  that  toward  it,  on  every  night 
whereon  it  should  be  visible  and  within  their  range  of 
vision,  their  gaze  should  be  directed,  and  a  last  good 
night  exhaled.  Many  stars  were  successively  put  in 
nomination  for  this  high  choice,  and  after  an  active 
canvass,  the  unanimous  suffrages  of  the  lovers  fell,  at 
last,  on  the  North  Star,  as  best  symbolizing  the  con 
stancy,  devotion,  and  singleness  of  aim,  which  entered 
into  the  sentiments  to  be  breathed  from  these  two 
devoted  spirits,  from  their  separate  places  on  this 
little  planet,  toward  its  distant  polar  sphere. 

The  leave-taking  of  Juventus  finished,  and  his  last 
adieu  given,  the  Prince  walked  with  him,  a  short 
distance,  along  the  broad  avenue,  and  on  parting, 
said,  with  an  unwonted  tremor  in  his  voice — 

"  My  dear  boy,  we  shall  hope  to  hear  only  good 
news  from  you.  You  must  be  prepared  to  hear 
some  news  from  me  which  may  not  be  good." 

"  I  trust,"  said  Juventus,  recalling  a  chance  word 
of  Prima  as  to  the  depressed  spirits  of  her  father, 
"  there  is  no  illness,  of  which  I  have  not  been 
told." 

"No,  I  am  well  enough,"  said  the  Prince,  "but 
there  are  business  troubles  I  may  not  be  able  to 
surmount.  I  cannot  tell  yet.  It  is  this  which  has 
made  me  seem  less  ready  to  accede  to  your  plans 


GOING   TO   Till-.  FRONT. 


'45 


than  might  otherwise  have  been  the  case.  Prima's 
future  may  be  seriously  affected." 

"If  I  can  deserve  your  good  esteem,"  said  Juven- 
tus  eagerly,  "and  if  you  are  willing  to  trust  her 
future  \vith  me,  this  is  all  I  ask." 

The  Prince  pressed  his  hand  and  turned  back. 
He  went  into  the  deserted  and  darkened  parlor,  and 
sat  alone  for  several  hours,  not  going  up  stairs  to 
his  bed  room,  until  near  the  dawn  of  morning. 
The  Princess  did  not  know  of  this,  or  miss  his  com 
ing.  She  was  with  Prima,  who  had  not  known,  until 
the  final  farewell,  what  parting  meant,  when,  with  the 
sorrow  of  separation,  it  mingled  the  dark  forebodings 
born  of  the  terrors  of  a  cruel  and  bloody  war. 

10 


CHAPTER  XV. 

A    BAD    NAME. 

THE  dire  threat  and  malediction  which  Decima 
had  hurled,  as  a  Parthian  and  parting  shaft, 
over  the  obnoxious  apple-pie,  at  its  lovely  author, 
did  not  spend  its  force  in  the  air.  The  bad  name 
she  had  vindictively  promised  to  give  was  duly  be 
stowed.  The  Princess,  in  her  conscious  rectitude, 
and  in  the  quiet  pursuit  of  her  daily  round  of  duty, 
had  paid  no  more  attention  to  the  outgivings,  than 
she  had  to  the  outgoing,  of  Decima,  having,  long 
ago,  learned  that  nine-tenths  of  the  loud  talk  of 
Domesticus  was  sound  and  fury,  signifying  nothing. 
She  did  not  realize  that  the  giving  of  a  bad  name 
was  a  kind  of  final  and  irreversible  anathema  and 
interdict  which  Domesticus  held  in  reserve  for  ex 
treme  cases,  as  the  old  Popes  fulminated  their  bulls 
of  excommunication,  by  way  of  firing  the  last  and 
hottest  shot  in  the  well-filled  locker  out  of  which 
they  peppered  recusant  kings,  emperors,  and  non- 
defenders  of  the  faith. 

So,  when  the   Little  Lady  sallied  forth,  in   her 
innocence,  to  consult  the  sorcerers,  and  to  secure 
the  successor  of  Decima,  in  the  sphere  of  the  sauce 
pan,  she  was    greatly  taken   aback   by  what   she 
146 


A  BAD  NAME.  \^j 

encountered.  The  first  shape  summoned  for  her 
scrutiny  no  sooner  caught  sight  of  her,  and  sur 
veyed  her,  than  she  lied,  with  a  shriek  of  terror,  as 
if  from  contact  with  a  leper;  while  from  the  murky 
lurking-place  of  the  ministering  spirits,  to  which 
she  retired,  was  heard,  as  through  a  conceit  d  dia 
pason,  a  confused  murmur  of  objurgation  which  fell 
on  the  Little  Lady's  astonished  ear  like  the  hissing 
of  the  serpents  which  encircled  the  head  of  Medusa. 

All  the  spells  of  the  sorcerer  were  unavailing. 
The  Little  Lady  had  a  bad  name.  She  was  under 
the  ban  of  Domesticus.  If  he  could  have  his  cruel 
way,  no  one  should  ever  again  give  her  aid  and 
comfort  or  service.  She  might  die  of  hunger; 
she  might  perish  of  thirst;  she  might  be  houseless 
and  homeless ;  but  not  a  morsel  of  bread,  not  a  drop 
of  water,  not  a  helping  hand,  should  be  afforded  her 
by  him  or  his. 

What  she  was  reported,  in  these  imprecating 
depths,  and  by  these  wickedly  wagging  tongues,  to 
have  done,  to  mark  her  out  for  this  brand  of  Domes 
ticus,  was  something  of  which  even  Decima,  when 
she  set  on  foot  her  revengeful  outcry,  had  not 
dreamed.  The  utmost  that  she  charged  against  the 
Little  Lady  was  that  she  had,  by  a  single  wrongful 
and  malicious  act,  robbed  an  apple-pie  of  its  bottom 
crust,  and  a  poor  girl  of  a  month's  wages,  and  that, 
with  one  blow  of  her  high  hand,  she  had  evicted  the 
lemon  from  its  lawful  homestead  in  the  heart  of  the 
pie,  and  turned  an  honest  woman  out  of  doors. 

This  was  bad  enough,  but  as  the  accusation  was 


148 


DOMEST1CUS. 


caught  up  and  tossed  from  willing  tongues  to  greedy 
ears,  along  the  endless  whispering  gallery  which 
Domesticus  had  constructed,  and  in  which  his 
followers  waited,  it  grew  apace,  and  to  frightful  pro 
portions.  The  Little  Lady  had  invented  and  prac 
ticed  unheard-of  cruelties.  She  was  the  woman 
who  had  driven  away  the  lady  who  did  her  cooking. 
She  was  subject  to  spasms  of  insane  hatred  against 
Domesticus.  It  was  unsafe  to  come  under  her  roof. 
She  kept  her  household  at  the  starving  point.  She 
allowed  no  rest  or  respite,  not  a  day,  or  an  hour 
off,  or  an  evening  out.  She  had  ordered  a  good- 
looking  and  inoffensive  young  parcel  clerk  of  a  re 
spectable  grocer,  out  of  the  house,  with  fierce  denun 
ciation,  simply  because  he  wanted  to  spend  the 
entire  morning  with  the  housemaids.  She  had 
forbidden*  card-parties,  below  stairs.  She  had 
emptied  a  flagon  into  the  sink,  with  her  own  hands, 
because  she  declared  that  it  was  falsely  labeled  cough 
mixture,  which  it  was,  but  for  all  that  no  lady  would 
have  done  it.  She  had  brained  several  unoffending 
persons  with  the  rolling  pin,  and  if  her  premises 
should  be  searched  there  was  no  telling  what  might 
be  found ;  and  even  if  old  Tremens  should  tell  all 
he  knew  about  the  ghosts  that  went  up  and  down 
the  cellar  stairs,  in  the  dead  of  night,  when  he 
kept  the  house  one  summer,  the  mansion  would 
soon  be  marked  by  the  avengers  "and  made  a  howl 
ing  heap,  it  would." 

This  time,  however,  Domesticus  had  overshot  the 
mark.     True,  he  had  a  momentary  triumph.     The 


A  BAD  NAME.  \  49 

Little  Lady  was  obliged  to  retire,  ignominiously, 
and  with  a  sense  of  leaving  pointed  fingers,  and 
cruel  calumnies,  and  derisive  epithets,  behind  her, 
and  she  felt  as  though  she  were  doing  penance,  in 
public,  for  some  heinous  crime.  The  humiliation 
was  only  for  a  very  short  time,  and  it  was  followed, 
on  her  part,  by  a  healthful  reaction  of  good  humor. 
If  Domesticus  had  only  found  food  for  derision  in 
her  honest,  though  futile  efforts  at  economic  rule, 
during  the  brief  episode  of  her  weights  and  meas 
ures,  she  now,  in  her  turn,  found  only  amusement 
and  a  sense  of  whimsical  pity  at  this  ebullition  of 
his  wrath,  which,  in  reality,  did  her  no  more  harm 
than  the  fierce  looks  of  the  stiff-jointed  old  giant 
who  sat  in  his  cave  and  grinned  at  Christian,  on  his 
way  to  the  Celestial  City,  did  to  that  valiant  pilgrim. 

She  came  home,  as  from  a  matinee  at  the  Amphi 
theatre,  and  recounted  her  experience  to  Prima,  who 
was,  at  first,  a  little  frightened. 

"  I  declare,"  she  said,  "  this  is  outrageous.  It  is 
all  Decima's  doings.  Cannot  papa  have  that  dread 
ful  woman  arrested?  To  set  on  foot  such  slanders 
must  surely  be  a  crime  to  be  punished  by  the 
judges." 

"  If  all  the  people,  high  and  low,  who  slander 
other  people  were  to  be  arrested,"  replied  the  Prin 
cess,  with  a  wonderful  access  of  wisdom,  "  the  judges 
would  have  their  hands  so  full  with  them  that  all 
other  criminals  would  go  scot  free.  Once  upon  a 
time,  such  a  thing  as  this  would  have  made  me  feel 
dreadfully,  and  I  should  have  had  several  crying 


DOMESTICUS. 

spells  over  it,  but  the  tender  grace  of  a  day  that  is 
dead,  if  it  was  a  grace,  belongs  to  that  remote  period, 
and  I  have  grown  as  tough  as  a  knot  of  gnarled 
oak." 

"  But  if  they  won't  live  with  you,  mamma,  what 
are  we  going  to  do  ?  " 

"  This  gust  will  blow  itself  out,"  said  the  Princess. 
"  So  many  other  mistresses  will  be  given  bad  names 
that,  by  and  by,  they  won't  be  able  to  remember 
who  are  on  the  black  list  and  who  are  off  it." 

"  Why  not  do  as  the  Princess  Prompta  told  us, 
the  other  day,  she  does  ?  "  said  Prima.  "  She  cap 
tures  new  arrivals  at  the  shore  end  of  the  ship's 
gang-blanks,  who  cannot  speak  or  understand,  a 
word  of  our  mother  tongue,  and  gets  them  into  her 
service,  before  Domesticus  has  a  chance  to  put  his 
clutches  on  them,  and  then  she  teaches  them  every 
thing  herself." 

"  Yes,  but  didn't  you  hear  the  story  she  told  of 
the  foreign  virago,  over  six  feet  tall,  who,  when,  at 
the  end  of  the  first  month,  her  ten  sestertia  were 
paid  her,  held  up  ten  bony  fingers,  three  times, 
in  succession,  and  poured  forth  such  a  volley  of 
Norse  or  Runic,  or  some  other  unknown  tongue, 
that  she  had  to  give  her  all  the  money  she  had  in 
the  house,  and  a  silk  dress,  and  ever  so  much  imita 
tion  lace  besides." 

"  I  suppose  we  must  send  for  old  Patella,"  said 
Prima. 

"  I  sent  for  her,  before  I  came  up  stairs,"  said  the 
Princess. 


A  BAD  NAME.  \  5  i 

"  Old  Patella  "  was  a  stand-by  of  the  family,  of  the 
rank  and  file  of  Domesticus,  who  having  been  gen 
erously  helped,  in  the  poverty  of  her  early  days,  by 
the  Princess,  as  well  as  kept  in  her  service,  had 
graduated  to  the  degree  and  dignity  of  day-work 
and  lived  in  a  secluded  altitude  of  her  own,  whence 
she  descended  to  assist  her  patrons,  as  occasion 
required.  She  had  been  a  hard-working,  indefati 
gable  woman,  skillful  with  her  scrubbing-brush,  and 
able  to  turn  her  hand  to  almost  any  department  of 
service.  Besides  which  she  was  reputed  to  have 
saved  all  she  had  earned,  beyond  her  very  frugal 
needs  and  the  due  stipend  paid  at  the  shrine  of  her 
devotions. 

"What  should  we  do,"  the  Prince  had  often 
said,  "  if  we  were  not  sure  that  old  Patella  is  pray 
ing  for  us,  night  and  day?  " 

"A  brilliant  idea  strikes  me,"  said  Prima  ;  "  if  you 
are  under  the  ban  of  Domesticus,  why  not  teach 
Stella  to  cook  ?  She  is  wonderfully  bright,  only  her 
intelligence  always  seems  to  be  about  the  wrong 
thing.  It  would  be  a  good  plan  to  concentrate  it 
on  the  culinary  art." 

"  I  must  leave  Stella  to  you,"  said  the  Princess. 
"  I  have  got  beyond  trying  to  teach  the  rudiments." 

"  But,  mamma,  how  many,  and  how  much,  you 
have  taught." 

"  I  know  I  have,  and  perhaps  that  is  really  the 
way  in  which  I  have  learned  to  do  for  myself.  The 
teacher's  best  pay  is  very  often  what  he  gains  from 
the  instruction  he  gives  to  others.  I  might,  even 


152 


DOMESTICUS. 


now,  be  willing  to  teach  what  I  know,  to  any  one 
wanting  to  learn,  but  unteachableness  is  the  badge 
of  the  whole  race  to  which  Stella  belongs." 

"  Still,  we  can't  send  her  away,  and  why  may  not 
I  try  the  experiment  ?  I  will  get  all  the  new  re 
ceipt  books  and  cooking  books,  and  she  is  a  good 
reader  and  has  real  taste ;  perhaps  I  can  really  and 
truly  help  you,  more  than  you  think,  and  then,  you 
know,  according  to  what  you  have  just  said,  even  if 
the  pupil  learns  nothing,  the  teacher  may  learn  some 
thing." 

"  It  will  be  the  blind  leading  the  blind,  I  fear," 
said  the  Princess,  "  but  you  may  make  any  venture 
you  please  with  Stella." 

Prima  was  an  adept  at  higher  instruction,  as  she 
was  with  her  needle,  and  in  various  arts  requiring 
skill  and  dexterity  of  hand.  This  was  her  first  ex 
cursion  into  the  perilous  region  she  proposed  to 
explore,  in  her  new  capacity  of  guide  and  pioneer, 
with  Stella  as  her  sole  follower,  but  she  was  deter 
mined  to  try  her  fortune  in  the  fresh  field. 

The  science  of  dietetics  was  now  approached  on 
the  side  of  the  intellect  and  the  imagination.  Prima 
invested  some  irrecoverable  sums  in  ponderous  vol 
umes,  which  were  to  the  new  subject  of  her  study 
what  the  Pandects  and  Digests  were  to  the  body  of 
the  law.  They  codified  the  whole  vast  science  and 
reduced  it  to  a  perfect  system.  Here  were  diagrams 
of  prize  bullocks,  and  fatted  calves,  and  trussed 
fowls,  all  exhibited  with  lines,  and  letters,  and  fig 
ures,  in  an  attractive  simplicity,  such  as  on  the 


A  BAD  NAM  I-:.  !^ 

pages  of  Euclid  charm  the  eye  of  the  beginner  in 
geometry. 

Prima,  as  she  pursued  her  studies,  and  took  in 
not  only  these  guide  books  and  digests  of  the  art, 
but  explored  its  wider  range,  was  amazed  at  the 
learning  which  had  been  lavished  on  the  culinary 
art ;  at  the  great  names  which  were  identified  with 
its  triumphs;  the  memories  it  enshrined,  and  the 
history  it  had  created.  It  was  the  earliest  hand 
maid  of  hospitality,  when  men  entertained  angels 
unawares.  It  was  coeval  with  the  sacred  ties  of 
friendship,  and  the  first  altar-fires  of  devotion.  It 
was  interwoven  with  the  threads  of  classic  song  and 
story;  with  the  rude  legends  of  barbaric  races;  with 
the  whole  stately  growth  of  Civilization.  It  was  the 
ceaseless  strengthener  of  brain  and  muscle ;  the 
great  stay  of  human  labor ;  the  promoter  of  genial 
intercourse ;  the  source  of  inexhaustible  wit,  and 
humor,  and  high  discourse;  the  foster-mother  of  all 
the  fair  humanities.  And  yet,  was  it  not  in  many 
aspects,  a  lost  art;  and  where,  oh  where,  was  the 
plastic  touch  at  which  it  would  re-ass.ert  its  rightful 
place,  and  be  once  more  a  benefaction  in  the  homes 
of  men ! 

Prima,  arrayed  in  her  panoply  of  literature,  and 
Stella,  in  her  illiterate  nakedness,  plunged  into  the 
breakers,  and  were,  of  course,  taken  very  far  out  to 
sea  by  the  undertow  of  their  absolute  ignorance. 
They  began  by  attempting  the  most  difficult  dishes, 
and  ended  by  a  waste  of  raw  material  unparalleled 
in  the  domestic  economy  of  the  Princess.  It  was 


154 


DOMESTICUS. 


as  if  a  tyro  in  the  rudiments  of  drawing  had  under 
taken  to  make  a  prize  copy  of  the  Laocoon.  At 
the  nearest  point  of  success,  in  one  of  their  sim 
plest  endeavors,  Prima  left  Stella  to  watch  the  seem 
ingly  favorable  conditions  to  which  they  had  brought 
the  compounded  elements  of  a  projected  pudding, 
in  order  that  she  might  finish  a  letter  to  Juventus. 
During  her  absence,  the  strains  of  martial  music, 
indicating  the  passing  of  a  legion  on  its  way  to  the 
distant  front  of  the  war,  drew  Stella  to  the  nearer 
front  of  the  palace,  to  shed  a  few  tears  and  wave  a 
greeting  and  farewell ;  on  her  return,  the  utter  col 
lapse  and  irretrievable  ruin  of  the  pudding  were  as 
obvious  as  the  traditional  fate  of  the  slapjacks 
which  Alfred  the  Great  forgot  to  turn,  at  the  criti 
cal  point  of  his  country's  fate.  Stella,  in  her  efforts 
to  remedy  the  disaster,  contrived  to  upset  a  kettle 
of  hot  water  upon  her  blundering  self,  and  was 
conveyed,  in  a  scalded  condition,  to  the  upper 
regions,  where  Prima  had  no  consolation  in  tend 
ing  her  except  the  thought  that  she  might  be  learn 
ing  something  which  would  fit  her  for  hospital  ser 
vice,  in  case  Juventus  should  have  the  ill-luck  to 
come  home  with  a  wound. 

Practical  cooking,  from  a  literary  point  of  view, 
having  been  demonstrated  to  be  a  failure,  Prima 
willingly  confessed  that  she  had  begun  at  the  wrong 
end,  and  that  this  department  of  human  effort  and 
skill,  like  every  other — higher  it  might  be,  but  not 
a  whit  more  needful  for  human  progress — must  have 
its  regular  and  gradual  processes  of  training  and 


A  BAD  NAME.  \^ 

instruction.  First  the  blade,  then  the  ear,  and  then 
the  full  corn  in  the  ear,  is  a  law  of  development 
which  common  sense  will  apply  as  well  to  the 
acquisition  of  the  art  of  cooking  the  corn  as  to  the 
art  of  cultivating  it.  Minerva  might  spring,  full 
armed,  from  the  brain  of  Jove,  in  the  golden  age  of 
mythology,  but  it  is  unreasonable  to  expect  a  white- 
frocked  and  white-capped  Chef,  with  his  array  of 
countless  saucepans,  to  bustle  into  being  out  of 
nothingness,  at  the  whimpering  cry  of  a  distressed 
housewife.  Everybody  else  is  trained  for  their 
work,  everybody  else  is  taught,  apprenticed,  bound 
out,  articled,  or  matriculated,  but  Domesticus  has, 
somehow,  set  his  foot  on  the  rule  of  growth  and 
tutelage,  and  established  ignorance  as  the  primal 
and  permanent  law  of  his  disordered  realm. 

"  Why  should  not  these  things  which  are  all  so 
very  needful  for  comfort  and  happiness,  in  all  homes, 
high  and  low,  be  taught,  like  other  branches  ?" 
said  Prima  to  the  Princess. 

"  They  ought  to  be,"  said  the  Princess,  "  and  on 
the  same  principle,  that  since  you  dismounted,  so 
gracefully,  or  ungracefully,  from  your  very  high 
horse,  after  Stella  had  been  thrown,  you  are  now,  as  I 
notice,  taking  lessons  of  old  Patella  in  the  simplest 
mixtures,  there  should  be  regularly  established 
schools  to  teach  these  useful  arts." 

"  I  have  been  thinking  about  it,"  said  Prima,  "and 
my  high  horse,  as  you  call  him,  will  not,  I  hope, 
prove  a  wholly  useless  animal.  I  have  ridden  him 
fast  enough,  and  far  enough,  to  arrive  at  some  con- 


1 56 


DO  ME  STIC  US. 


elusions  which  I  want  to  compare  with  your  own, 
and  have  you  tell  me  whether  they  are  all  wrong." 

"  I  dare  say  they  are  all  quite  right,  Prima,"  said 
the  Princess ;  "  I  am  only  glad  if  you  can  express 
them,  for  the  subject  is  a  wonderfully  muddling  one ; 
and  while  my  convictions  are  clear  to  my  own 
mind,  I  fear  I  cannot  make  them  plain  to  any  one 
else." 

"  What  I  have  thought,"  said  Prima,  "  is  that  all 
these  things  which  relate  to  household  service,  up 
stairs,  down  stairs,  and  in  my  lady's  chamber,  fall 
directly  into  the  line  of  object  teaching,  and  ought  to 
be  taught,  in  that  way,  and  first  of  all,  to  children,  so 
as  to  give  the  benefit  of  the  teaching  in  their  homes, 
or  half-homes,  and  to  get  their  hands  in.  Then, 
if  they  go  out  to  service,  they  can  pursue  the  study, 
regularly,  to  fit  them  for  their  work,  and  if  they  do 
not,  they  will  know  something  of  house  manage 
ment,  and  be  able  to  have  a  certain  sense  of  order 
and  arrangement,  which,  as  you  have  always  said, 
comes  by  training  and  not  by  nature.  Now,  of 
course,  we  cannot  expect  to  see  schools  started  and 
equipped,  all  at  once,  for  these  studies,  but  is  it  not 
a  good  end  to  aim  at,  and  a  field  of  instruction 
sooner  or  later,  to  be  occupied  ?  And  why  is  it  not  a 
philanthropic  thing,  because  it  would  not  only  help 
employers,  but  help  working  people,  if  their  wives 
and  daughters  had  the  skill  to  make  their  dwellings, 
or  their  rooms,  less  dreary  and  more  attractive,  by 
appetizing  meals,  however  humble,  and  by  cleanly, 
orderly  service.,  however  rude? 


A  BAD  N.  I  MI-.. 


'57 


41 1  think  that  is  all  right  and  sound,  Prima,"  said 
the  Princess,  "  I  would  encourage  everything  in 
the  way  of  teaching,  and,  as  you  say,  it  is  essentially 
object  teaching,  like  the  instruction  in  a  laboratory. 
I  think  every  one  who  attempts  this  kind  of  experi 
mental  teaching  is  a  benefactor — or  a  benefactress, 
— for  the  teacher,  I  believe,  is  almost  always  a  woman ; 
but  the  difficulty  with  such  instruction,  however  val 
uable,  so  far  as  Domesticus  is  concerned,  is  that 
his  followers  have  never  learned  the  art  of  learning, 
and  that  is  the  first  and  great  need.  They  cannot 
grasp  the  thing  they  are  taught,  and  keep  it,  or  make 
it  their  own.  And,  in  general,  they  do  not  want  to, 
and  won't,  and  there  is  the  end.  My  dear  Prima, 
you  must  catch  Domesticus  young,  very  young,  to 
teach  him  anything.  But  your  plan,  of  beginning 
with  the  children,  I  like,  and  there  is  good  in  it,  to 
be  attempted,  if  not  to  be  actually  accomplished." 

"  I  am  happy,"  said  Prima,  "  that  you  agree  with 
me.  I  do  not  claim  any  originality  in  my  ideas ; 
they  have  come  from  what  I  have  read  and  heard 
of  other  people's  doings  and  efforts,  as  much  as 
from  my  own  reflections,  though,  to  be  fair  to 
myself,  the  thought  was  my  own,  before  I  found  that 
it  was,  quite  largely,  the  thought  of  others.  This, 
I  believe  is,  often,  the  vindication  of  the  usefulness 
of  an  idea,  that  it  enters  more  minds  than  one  at 
once.  What  I  want  most  to  know  is  whether  I  can 
do  anything  myself,  in  my  small  way,  to  help  for 
ward  the  good  cause.  I  can  do  nothing  without 
you." 


I  $$  DOMESTJCUS. 

"  I  am  with  you,  heart  and  soul,"  said  the  Prin 
cess.  "  Only  let  us  get  through  this  dreadful  strife 
of  the  Sisterhood,  and  have  peace,  if  it  is  ever  to 
come ;  and  then  we  will  work  together  in  this  wide 
field,  even  if  we  can  cultivate  only  a  little  corner  of 
it.  I  promise  you  I  will  help,  in  every  way  I  can, 
in  laying  the  foundation  for  teaching  the  untaught 
art  of  household  service." 

The  Little  Lady  never  in  all  her  life  made  a 
promise  which  she  did  not  fully  keep. 


CHAPTER   XVI. 

A    CATASTROPHE. 

THUNDERBOLTS  in  clear  skies  were  not  in 
frequent  in  the  Imperial  City.  There  were 
spirits  in  the  air  which  kept  it  full  of  explosive 
elements,  and  which,  like  the  great  Destroyer,  loved 
to  launch  their  bolts  at  shining  marks.  And  yet, 
the  sudden  crash  which  so  often  startled  the  com 
munity  was  very  apt  to  be  merely  the  deferred 
result  of  causes  which  had  been  working,  slowly 
and  surely,  to  the  inevitable  catastrophe.  The  un 
expected  happens  only  to  the  unexpectant.  The 
wise  men,  who  had  grown  gray  in  casting  financial 
horoscopes,  the  soothsayers  of  the  money  circles, 
who  could  discern,  on  the  dilated  edge  of  overtrad 
ing,  or  in  the  distended  bubble  of  speculation,  the 
signs  of  impending  collapse,  could  often  foresee  and 
foretell  the  calamities  which  took  the  unwary  by 
surprise. 

The  wise  men  and  the  soothsayers  had,  from  the 
beginning  of  the  war,  predicted  the  downfall  of  the 
Prince  and  his  princely  house.  Their  vastly  ex 
tended  dealings  on  the  nether  side  of  the  invisible 
line  seemed  to  make  this  a  foregone  conclusion. 
Their  debtors  in  that  wide  region  were  turned,  all 


!6o  DOMESTICUS. 

at  once,  into  foreign  belligerents,  without  means  to 
meet  their  obligations,  if  they  had  any  longer  the 
desire  to  do  so,  and  with  their  debts  all  cancelled  by 
the  first  cannonade. 

The  Prince  ought  to  have  succumbed  at  once.  He 
should  have  done,  as  others  did  who  were  in  similar 
plight,  and  who  made  no  effort  to  fight  against  fate, 
or  to  stand  up  under  the  crushing  weight  of  a 
fratricidal  strife.  But  the  Prince  thought  he  was 
solvent,  whatever  might  be  the  outcome  of  the  war. 
He  had  large  resources,  not  involved  in  his  business. 
He  had  bought  and  paid  for  a  tract  of  land,  within  the 
limits  of  the  Imperial  City,  which  he  owned  in  his 
own  right,  burdened  with  no  debt,  and  which,  of  itself, 
he  thought,  was  a  guaranty  of  fortune,  although, 
being  almost  wholly  unimproved,  it  yielded  no 
return.  He  owned  the  palace  which  was  his  home, 
and  the  great  gains  of  his  principality  had  always 
seemed  sufficient  to  make  adversity  impossible. 

Besides,  he  hugged  and  cherished  the  delusion  that 
the  war  cloud  would  soon  blow  over.  He  could  not 
bring  himself  to  believe  that  when  the  Sisterhood 
found  itself  really  arrayed  in  arms,  and  divided 
against  itself,  in  hostile  camps  and  with  opposing 
hosts,  the  deadly  feud  would  be  forced  to  the  issue 
of  mortal  combat.  Surely,  there  would  be  some 
other  way  than  war,  and  if  war  came,  it  might  be 
only  a  brush,  a  drawing  of  fire,  enough  fighting  to 
show  that  there  were  brave  men  on  both  sides, 
and  no  cowards  on  either ;  then  the  fraternal  em 
brace,  and  the  pipe  of  peace,  and  a  new  welding 


./ 

of  the  bonds  of  union,  or  an  amicable  separation 
and  a  treaty  between  two  separate  sovereignties. 

Gin-in-  t  -  these  false  hopes,  he  strained  every 
nerve  to  maintain  his  credit  and  to  meet  all  his 
obligations,  and  having  powerful  friends  and  allies 
beyond  the  sea,  who  had  great  faith  in  the  Prince's 
ability,  and  were  in  full  sympathy  with  his  mis 
taken  ideas,  he  was  able,  without  selling  his  lands, 
or  even  raising  money  upon  them — which  might 
have  injured  his  standing  at  home — to  carry  a  brave 
exterior,  to  maintain  himself  as  aforetime,  and  to 
seem  to  be  outriding  the  storm. 

All  at  once,  and  with  little  premonition,  his 
foreign  props  failed  him.  New  complications  had 
arisen.  The  death  of  the  chief  of  a  great  house, 
his  principal  ally,  made  necessary  the  liquidation  of 
its  affairs,  and  the  supports  he  had  leaned  upon  and 
trusted  gave  way  of  a  sudden.  He  was  forced  to 
meet,  immediately,  an  overwhelming  amount  of 
debt,  which  all  his  means  were  insufficient  to  dis 
charge.  Failure  was  now  inevitable.  Rumors  flew 
thick  and  fast,  and  were  soon  followed  by  the  truth 
ful  statement,  heralded  throughout  the  Imperial 
City,  that  the  Prince  had  suspended  payment,  the 
mildest  form  of  expression,  known  to  the  vernacular 
of  the  commercial  world,  to  indicate  financial  ruin. 

The  Prince  met  the  blow  with  such  fortitude  as 
he  could  summon.  One  thing  he  determined  at  the 
outset  of  his  new  and  hard  experience  as  an  insol 
vent.  All  the  men  whom  he  owed  should  fare  alike. 
He  would  not  prefer  one  to  another.  All  he  had 
ii 


!62  DOMESTICUS. 

should  go,  equally,  to  all  to  whom  he  was  indebted. 
This,  he  was  sure,  was  right.  Then  he  winced  at 
the  thought  that  he  had  wholly  failed  to  make  any 
provision,  when  he  might  have  made  it,  for  such  an 
emergency  as  this.  Years  ago,  when  he  was  in  the 
fullest  tide  of  prosperity,  when  he  gave  in  charity 
or  spent  in  luxury,  in  a  single  twelvemonth,  what 
would  now,  in  his  altered  state,  be  almost  a  compe 
tency,  why  had  he  not  given  the  palace  to  the 
Princess,  or  made  some  liberal  provision  for  her,  as 
he  might  properly  have  done  ?  He  had  never 
dreamed  of  this  hideous  extremity,  and  now  it  was 
too  late. 

Even  the  furniture  in  his  house,  while  it  was  all 
bought  and  added  to,  with  lavish  generosity,  for 
her  use  and  enjoyment,  he  had  never  formally 
made  over  to  her,  and,  aside  from  the  jewels,  and 
trinkets,  and  wardrobe,  which  she  had  in  her  per 
sonal  control,  and  a  few  scattered  articles  in  the 
palace,  he  knew  not  if  there  was  anything  she  could 
call  her  own.  She  had  no  patrimony,  her  father 
having,  like  so  many  of  the  citizens  of  the  Imperial 
City,  lived  in  luxury  while  his  business  prospered, 
but  on  such  a  scale  that,  when  he  died,  its  liquidation 
left  only  a  scant  residuum.  The  Prince  had  been 
equally  foolish.  All  that  had  been  his  was  now 
only  a  fund  for  the  payment  of  his  debts.  His 
whole  estate  must  go,  at  once,  into  some  safe  hand, 
for  equal  distribution  among  all  the  creditors. 
Already,  and  before  the  ink  was  dry  on  the  parch 
ment  which  provided  for  this  transfer,  one  sharpest 


A  r.tT.-isTKornr.. 


163 


money  dealer  had  sued  out  a  summary  writ,  to 
enforce  payment  of  a  dishonored  draft,  and  he  was 
made  to  feel  that,  in  every  way,  he  was  tied,  hand 
and  foot,  with  all  the  disabilities  and  disadvantages 
of  a  debtor. 

I  Ie  dreaded  to  go  to  his  own  home.  The  Princess 
knew  that  there  was  difficulty  and  danger,  but  he 
had  never  been  willing  to  admit  to  himself,  much 
less  to  her,  the  possibility  of  such  an  ending  as  this. 
Not  until  the  morning  of  the  fatal  day,  when,  like 
the  swift-footed  messengers  who  heaped  their  suc 
cessive  burdens  of  evil  tidings  upon  the  patriarch 
of  Ux,  the  post  and  the  electric  current  brought 
him  the  final  and  fatal  missives  which  wrought  his 

o 

ruin,  had  he  permitted  the  thought  of  failure.  When 
he  saw  it  could  not  be  averted,  lu  had  sent  for  the 
jurisconsults,  and  in  an  hour's  time,  their  ready  arts 
had  stripped  him,  with  his  own  free  will,  of  all  he 
possessed,  and  converted  him  from  a  Merchant 
Prince  into  a  pauper.  So,  at  least,  he  said  bitterly 
to  himself,  for,  at  this  moment  of  his  downfall,  he 
felt  as  if  he  had  nothing  left  from  the  past  and 
nothing  to  look  forward  to  in  the  future. 

He  waited  until  all  the  formalities  were  concluded 
which  perfected  the  transfer  of  his  many  properties 
from  himself  to  one  Assignatus,  the  chosen  custo 
dian  for  the  benefit  of  all  his  creditors,  and  then, 
with  a  heavy  heart,  made  his  way  homeward. 

He  crossed  the  threshold  of  his  palace — his  no 
longer — and  went  straight,  as  his  custom  was,  to  the 
apartment  of  the  Princess,  where  he  had  always  been 


j  64  D  OMESTICUS. 

sure  of  a  smile  and  a  welcome,  whatever  storms 
might  be  raging  without. 

He  had  prepared  no  phrases  in  which  to  set 
before  her  the  calamity  that  had  befallen  him.  He 
could  hardly,  in  his  own  thoughts,  grasp  its  fearful 
meaning,  much  less  clothe  it  in  words.  What  filled 
him  \vith  alarm  and  terror  was  the  apprehension 
of  the  effect  the  evil  tidings  might  have  on  her.  He 
thought  she  would  be  crushed  to  the  earth ;  she 
might  be  struck  senseless  and  speechless ;  she  might 
die,  and  then  what  should  he  do  ?  But  he  could 
not  keep  away  from  her,  and  when  he  came  into  her 
sight,  with  a  tottering  step — for  he  was  almost  pros 
trated  by  the  strain  to  which  he  had  been  subjected 
during  those  long  morning  hours — and  with  a 
haggard  face,  wrhich  told  the  whole  sad  story,  before 
he  had  uttered  the  broken  words  of  which — 
"  ruined  " — was  all  she  caught,  he  was  in  her  em 
brace,  and  she  was  ready  with  all  the  aid  and 
comfort  a  loving  heart  could  give. 

"  I  feared  it  would  come  to  this,"  she  said,  softly, 
as  she  made  him  sit  beside  her,  with  his  hand  in 
hers,  "  and  now,  dearest,  I  hope  it  may  not  be  as  bad 
as  you  have  dreaded." 

The  Princess  had  not  been  crushed  to  the  earth, 
nor  struck  speechless,  nor  was  she  going  to  die. 
The  Prince's  fears  for  her  relieved,  turned  upon  him 
self  again. 

"It  is  as  bad  as  can  be.  I  have  lost  every 
thing." 

"  Not  your  good  name,  I  am  sure ;  not  your  wife, 


A  CATASTROPHE.  165 

for  she  is  beside  you ;  not  your  children,  for  they 
are  all  safe  at  home." 

"  They  will  be  beggars,"  said  the  Prince. 

"  Not  while  we  have  strength  to  do  a  day's  work 
for  them,  or  they  for  us." 

"  You  must  give  up  your  chariots  and  horses," 
said  the  Prince. 

"  It  will  do  us  all  good  to  walk." 

"  We  must  quit  the  palace." 

"  We  can  be  just  as  happy  in  a  smaller  house,  and 
with  far  less  care." 

"  You  will  have  to  do  your  own  housework." 

"  It  will  be  a  real  pleasure.  We  shall  have  a  final 
riddance  of  Domesticus." 

"  You  will  have  a  broken-down  husband  on  your 
hands." 

"  It  will  be  the  sweetest  duty  of  my  life  to  care 
for  him." 

"  You  will  be  expelled  from  the  circle  of  Soci- 
etas." 

'     "  We  shall  have  the  inner  and  more  sacred  circle 
of  home." 

"  I  shall  no  longer  be  a  Prince." 

"  Then  you  will  be  an  ex-Prince,"  and  the  Little 
Lady  burst  into  laughter,  for  it  had  always  seemed 
to  her,  when  the  Prince  introduced  her  to  ex- 
Consuls,  ex-Praetors  and  ex-Ediles,  a  most  ridicu 
lous  thing  that  the  more  a  man  was  out  of  office, 
the  more  he  held  on  to  any  title  that  had  ever 
belonged  to  it,  as  to  a  kind  of  perpetual  perqi;: 

Her   laughter   wao   always  contagious,  and  the 


1 66  &  OMESTICUS. 

Prince  could  hardly  help  responding  with  a  smile, 
but  he  clung  to  the  dismal  shadow  which  he 
brought  with  him  into  the  palace,  and  he  was  begin 
ning  to  feel  a  little  disappointed  that  the  Princess 
was  not  enveloped  in  its  black  folds  as  completely 
as  he  was  himself. 

"  You  really  do  not  seem  to  care  very  much  for 
my  misfortunes,"  he  said. 

"  It  is  because  I  care  for  you,  so  very  much  more 
than  for  all  else,  good  fortune,  bad  fortune,  or  any 
thing  in  the  whole  world,"  she  said,  drawing  him 
still  nearer  to  her, "  that  I  will  not  be  made  sad  while 
you  and  the  children  are  left  to  me.  Wherever  we 
are  all  together,  there  will  be  home,  and  happiness, 
whether  we  have  much  or  little." 

Then  they  sat  in  silence,  for  some  time. 

"  You  are  braver  than  I,"  said  the  Prince,  at  last, 
"  and  I  am  only  too  thankful  you  are  not  made 
wretched  by  this  miserable  business.  Up  to  last 
night,  I  hoped  to  get  through;  even  this  morning,  I 
had  offers  of  help  which  might  possibly  have  tided 
us  along,  perhaps  saved  us,  but  the  prospect  was 
too  gloomy.  I  have  done  all  I  could.  Only  I 
reproach  myself  for  not  having  made  provision  for 
you,  as  I  ought  to  have  done.  I  should  have  put 
the  palace  in  your  name,  years  ago.  I  never  antici 
pated  such  a  time  as  this.  Even  the  furniture  I 
never  made  over  to  you.  I  suppose,  now,  every 
thing  will  have  to  go  to  the  creditors." 

And  the  Prince  looked  gloomily  around,  as  if 
apprehensive  that  some  of  them  were  waiting,  in 


A  CATASTROPHE.  t6/ 

the  second-story  hall,  to  carry  off  the  sofa  on  which 
he  and  the  Princess  were  sitting,  in  their  sorrow. 

"  No  matter  for  that,"  said  she  in  a  cheery  tone. 
"  We  shall  not  want  much,  and  you  will  be  sur 
prised  to  see  how  I  can  make  a  very  little  go  a  great 
ways.  At  all  events,  I  am  not  going  to  be  miser 
able  and  disconsolate,  until  there  is  positively  noth 
ing  else  to  be  done." 

"  You  are  sure  you  are  not  putting  all  this  on, 
just  to  keep  me  up,"  said  the  poor  Prince,  still 
clinging  to  the  shadow. 

"  Perfectly  sure,"  said  the  Princess,  rising  and 
standing  before  him,  her  whole  presence  taking  on 
an  air  of  dignity  he  had  never  seen  so  marked  before, 
"  I  am  as  honest  in  this  as  I  have  always  been,  in 
everything.  Did  I  not  take  you  for  richer  or 
poorer,  and  of  what  use  am  I,  if,  when  poverty 
comes,  I  cannot  help  you  bear  it  ?  I  do  not  care 
how  bad  things  may  be.  Your  home  shall  always 
be  happy,  if  my  heart  and  hands  can  make  it  so. 
All  I  ask  is  your  love,  to  make  my  labor  light." 

"  That  shall  never  fail  you,"  said  the  Prince, 
rising  in  his  turn,  and  clasping  her  in  his  arms, 
"  only  I  can  not  forgive  myself  for  my  own  folly  and 
want  of  foresight.  And  what  a  sad  change  for 
Prima  and  Juventus." 

"  It  may  be  the  best  thing  in  the  world  for  both 
of  them,"  said  the  Princess,  and  the  Prince — rinding 
it  was  quite  impossible  to  break  down  her  good 
spirits — yielded  himself  to  her  gentle  ministrations, 
and  to  her  efforts  to  change  the  current  of  his 


X68  DOMESTICUS. 

thoughts  into  the  quiet  channel  of  customary  things. 
Prima  and  the  children  were  soon  about  him,  with 
their  bright  faces,  and  before  bed  time  lie  was  dis 
posed  to  take  such  comfort  as  he  could  in  their 
cheerful  companionship,  and  as  a  last  resource  would 
fain  console  himself  with  the  traditional  saying  of 
one  of  the  wisest,  and  the  wealthiest,  of  the  old- 
time  millionaires  of  the  Imperial  City,  that  all  he 
could  ever  get  for  himself  out  of  his  fortune  was 
three  meals  a  day,  and  a  night's  lodging. 

In  fact,  the  tragical  disclosure  of  the  Prince  had 
not  come  upon  the  Little  Lady  entirely  without 
foreboding  on  her  part.  She  had  noted  his  anxi 
eties,  and  he  had  plainly  enough  expressed  his 
apprehensions  of  trouble,  although  in  so  vague  a 
way  as  not  to  excite  immediate  alarm.  She  had, 
however,  nerved  herself  for  disaster,  should  it  come, 
and  now  that  the  storm  had  burst,  she  felt  strong 
enough  to  brave  its  fury.  In  the  depth  of  her  heart 
was  a  sense  of  conscious  courage  to  grapple  with 
adverse  fortune,  as  bravely  as  when  she  fought  her 
battle  with  Domesticus,  and  there  was  a  source  of 
satisfaction  in  feeling  that  she  could  be,  more  than 
ever,  sovereign  in  her  own  sphere  when  circum 
scribed  and  contracted  by  necessity ;  for  she  well 
knew  that  the  comforts  and  luxuries  of  life  are  rarely 
relinquished  from  choice. 

The  revelation  of  the  Prince  also  explained  a 
mysterious  occurrence  of  the  morning,  which  she 
had  awaited  his  coming  to  elucidate,  but  now  she 
was  satisfied,  without  clearly  understanding  it  any 


A  CATASTROPHE.  \(^ 

better,  that  it  had  reference  to  the  catastrophe  he 
announced,  and  she  did  not  trouble  him  with  any 
questions.  She  had  been  away  from  home  most  of 
the  day,  on  a  visit  to  a  friend,  who  was  ill,  and  at 
whose  bedside  she  was  kept  for  several  hours.  On 
her  return,  Patella  had  come,  in  considerable  excite 
ment,  to  tell  her  that  two  men  who  called  themselves 
deputy-somethings,  she  could  not  remember  what, 
had  come  to  the  palace,  insisted  on  entering,  made 
themselves  very  free  indeed,  and  said  they  had  put  a 
levy  on  the  furniture,  and  it  covered  the  whole  of  it; 
but  after  they  had  gone  away  she  looked  all  over 
the  furniture,  and  could  not  find  a  scrap  of  new 
covering,  or  anything  else  on  it.  She  was  sure  they 
said  "  levy,"  because  they  said  it  over  and  over  a 
great  many  times. 

The  Princess  had  heard  of  levying  war,  and  levy 
ing  taxes,  but  she  had  never  heard  of  a  levy  on  furni 
ture,  and  thought  Patella  must  have  made  a  mistake. 

"  What  kind  of  men  were  they  ?" 

Patella  said  they  were  very  polite  and  gentle 
manly,  but  looked-  as  if  they  were  a  kind  it  would 
be  safer  to  keep  out  of  a  house,  before  they  got  into 
it,  than  to  try  to  put  out,  after  they  were  once  in. 

This  was  rather  vague,  in  the  way  of  description, 
but  it  had  to  suffice,  and  the  Princess  could  only 
wait  until  evening  and  then  she  kept  silence,  lest 
the  Prince's  trouble  should  be  made  greater.  He 
had  said  the  furniture  must  all  go  to  the  creditors, 
and  she  could  not  see  that  it  mattered  whether  it 
went  with  a  levy  on  it,  or  just  as  it  was. 


CHAPTER   XVII. 

RIGHT   AND   WRONG   OF    DOWER, 

IT  seemed  a  strange  thing  to  the  Prince  that,  for 
the  first  time  in  many  weeks,  he  should  enjoy  a 
long  and  unbroken  rest  during  the  night  which  fol 
lowed  the  day  of  his  failure.  He  had  retired  early, 
and  did  not  wake  until  long  after  his  accustomed 
hour  for  rising.  The  sleep  which  care  had  driven 
from  his  pillow,  while  he  thought  and  planned  to 
keep  his  property,  came  back,  with  healing  in  its 
wings,  as  soon  as  he  had  lost  it.  He  woke  with 
that  vague  sense  of  unreality  which  will  often 
possess  the  brain  after  a  long,  sound  slumber,  and 
it  was  some  time  before  he  could  recall  the  con 
sciousness  of  his  impoverished  condition,  which  was 
now  to  abide  with  him  in  all  his  waking  hours. 

He  found  the  Princess  and  Prima  at  the  breakfast 
table,  the  younger  children  having  gone  already  to 
their  daily  tasks  at  school.  He  was  greeted  with 
unusual  warmth  and  cheerfulness. 

"  Here  are  many  kind  words  from  old  friends," 
said  the  Princess,  handing  him  some  missives  she 
had  received,  expressing  regrets  and  sympathies  for 
the  sudden  misfortunes  of  the  Prince,  "  and  Gloriosa 
has  written  to  Prima  that  the  gates  of  Societas  are 
170 


RIGHT  A XD   WRONG  OF  DOWER.  ^ 

not  to  be  closed  upon  her,  without  due  notice,  and 
proposing  to  take  her  to  the  seashore,  or  some 
where,  for  the  Summer,  so  that  she  may  have  plenty 
of  gayety  to  distract  her  mind,  and  keep  it  from 
dwelling  too  much  on  Juventus,  in  his  perils,  or  on 
you,  in  your  anxieties." 

"She  is  a  frivolous  woman,"  said  the  Prince,  sen- 
tentiously. 

"  Hut  she  has  a  good  heart  under  all  her  frivolity," 
said  the  Princess,  "and  she  really  loves  Prima." 

"There  is  no  question  about  that,"  said  Prima, 
"and  her  invitation  is  just  as  kindly  intended  as  it 
is  absolutely  out  of  place,  and  beyond  acceptance. 
I  will  write  and  decline  it." 

"And  give  her  my  love,"  said  the  Princess. 

"And  mine,  I  suppose,"  said  the  Prince,  who  was 
becoming  more  amiable,  as  he  sipped  his  coffee  and 
began  on  a  second  chop,  somewhat  surprised  to  find 
that  everything  had  not  lost  its  flavor,  and  become 
absolutely  noxious  to  sight  and  sense. 

"  Father  Vindex  is  waiting  to  see  you,"  said  the 
Princess,  "  he  has  stopped,  on  his  way  to  his  busi 
ness,  and  was  very  glad  to  hear  you  were  resting. 
He  said  he  had  plenty  of  time,  and  you  were  to 
finish  your  breakfast." 

Vindex,  to  whom  the  Princess  gave  the  title  of 
Father,  on  account  of  his  age  and  the  respect  in  which 
he  was  held,  was  a  gray-headed  and  long-headed 
jurisconsult,  versed  in  all  the  learning  of  the  law 
and  its  intricate  methods.  The  Prince  had  long 
been  on  terms  of  friendly  intimacy  with  him,  and 


DO  ME  STIC  US. 

often  counseled  with  him  in  .various  matters  of  im 
portance  ;  in  the  present  emergency  he  had  been 
called  in  only  at  the  moment  when  the  crisis  had 
arrived,  and  when  immediate  action  was  required. 
He  had  then  but  little  opportunity  of  talking  with 
the  Prince  about  his  affairs,  and  hence  his  early  visit 
at  the  palace. 

He  went  at  once  to  the  topic  of  which  their 
thoughts  were  full. 

"  My  good  friend,"  he  said,  taking  the  Prince  by 
the  hand,  "you  had  a  hard  day,  yesterday,  but  things 
will  come  out  all  right  in  the  end." 

The  Prince  shook  his  head  mournfully,  and  abso 
lutely  refused  to  be  comforted  by  any  such  smooth 
prophecy. 

"  We  shall  see,"  said  Vindex,  "  in  the  meantime, 
it  is  very  fortunate  that  there  is  a  ready  way  of 
making  good  provision  for  your  wife  and  children." 

"How  is  that?  "asked  the  Prince,  "this  is  my 
greatest  regret,  that  I  neglected  to  make  provision 
myself,  when  I  had  it  in  my  power." 

"  You  stand  all  the  better  with  the  creditors  for 
not  having  done  so.  They  are  all  friendly,  except 
that  pestilent  fellow,  Furax,  and  we  have  got  the 
better  of  him,  in  spite  of  his  writ  and  levy.  I  found 
so  many  flaws  to  be  picked  in  his  proceedings,  that 
he  was  frightened  at  his  own  temerity,  and  was  glad 
to  take  half  the  sum  owing  him,  in  cash,  and  turn 
over  his  claim  and  suit  to  me.  I  shall  thus  control 
the  first  judgment  against  your  property  and  the 
levy  on  your  furniture,  which  it  is  a  capital  good 


RIGHT  A  .YD   I VR  ONG  OF  DOll'I-.  R. 


'73 


to  have.  This  was  all  done  last  night,  and 
well  done.  Mind,  I  did  not  take  it  to  myself,  and  I 
have  made  a  condition  that  any  proceedings  shall 
be  in  the  name  of  Furux." 

"  But  if  you  paid  half  the  debt,  where  did  you 
find  the  money.  I  had  none  and —  " 

"Oh,  I  had  a  few  thousand  idle  sestcrtia  and  they 
may  as  well  be  used  in  this  way  as  in  any  other, 
and  better.  Besides,  don't  you  see  I  am  your  first 
judgment  creditor,  ahead  of  every  one  else,  and 
what  better  security  can  I  have?" 

"Very  well,"  said  the  Prince,  "  I  thank  you,  most 
sincerely,  for  this  and  all  your  kindness,  but,  Vindex, 
what  did  you  mean  by  there  being  provision  for 
the  Princess?" 

"I  mean  just  this.  All  your  lands  are  entirely 
free  of  debt,  thank  fortune,  and  being  clear,  your 
wife  has  a  right  of  dower  in  them,  worth  enough 
to  provide  for  her  handsomely.  Assignatus,  to 
whom  you  conveyed  them,  yesterday,  in  trust  for 
your  creditors,  cannot  make  sale  of  a  square  inch  of 
them,  because  no  one  would  take  the  title  without 
a  release  of  her  dower  right  by  the  Princess,  and 
for  that  the  creditors  must  pay  her  its  full  value." 

"  I  always  supposed,"  said  the  Prince, "  that  a  wife's 
right  of  dower  was  something  she  did  not  come 
into  till  her  husband  died.  I  can  see  that  if  I  died 
it  would  be  worth  a  good  deal,  but  I  am  not  dead 
yet,  though  this  trouble  may  kill  me  very  soon." 

"It  will  help  to  keep  you  alive"  said  the  old 
jurisconsult,  "  because  it  will  give  a  new  train  to  your 


1 74  D  OMES  TIC  US. 

thoughts,  and  a  new  impulse  to  your  activities. 
Now  about  the  right  of  dower.  That  is  perfectly 
plain.  The  moment  the  wedding  ring  is  on  the 
wife's  finger,  and  the  knot  tied,  she  is  endowed  of  all 
her  husband's  lands.  This  is  a  property  right,  which 
she  cannot  be  deprived  of,  without  her  own  consent, 
so  long  as  she  continues  his  wife.  In  case  of  his 
death,  the  right  becomes  absolute,  and  then  she  is 
entitled  to  one-third,  for  life,  of  the  rents  of  the  lands 
or,  if  she  choose,  she  may  have  one-third  of  the 
lands  set  off  to  her,  under  the  direction  of  the  court, 
and  hold  them  as  long  as  she  lives.  This  is  what 
we  call  'admeasuring'  her  dower.  While  the  hus 
band  is  living,  of  course,  the  wife's  right  of  dower  is 
contingent — '  inchoate/ — as  the  law  calls  it." 

"Why  not  call  it  something  a  little  more  unintel 
ligible  ?  "  said  the  Prince.  "  The  jargon  of  the  law  is 
the  stiangest  thing  imaginable.  I  believe  it  is  part 
of  your  stock  in  trade." 

"  Of  course  it  is  ;  what  would  any  science  be  with 
out  its  technical  nomenclature.  'Inchoate'  means 
primarily,  in  a  chaotic  state,  and  nothing  can  be  more 
without  form  or  fixed  conditions  than  a  wife's  dower 
right,  as  long  as  her  husband  is  living,  and  nobody 
can  foretell  which  of  the  two  will  outlive  the  other." 

"  How  then  can  such  a  right  have  any  value  ?  It 
must  be  mere  guess  work." 

"It  is.  And  so  the  law  guesses  at  it,  and  has 
adopted  a  table  of  values  of  the  contingent  right, 
according  to  the  age  of  the  wife." 

"Then,  when  I  signed  the  parchment,  yesterday, 


RIGHT  A. A7>   WRONG  OF  DOll'l-.R. 


'75 


Assignatus  did  not  get  a  clear  title  for  the  benefit 
of  the  creditors.  It  was  subject  to  this  contingent 
right,  as  you  call  it,  of  the  Princess." 

"Just  so  and  rightfully,  because,  although  con 
tingent,  it  is  property,  and  she  must  be  paid  for  it. 
Your  case  is  very  unusual.  Ordinarily  a  man  mort 
gages  his  lands,  if  he  has  any,  before  he  fails,  and 
his  wife  joins  in  the  mortgage  and  releases  her 
dower.  But  your  lands  are  clear  of  debt  and  the 
dower  right  is  intact.  The  creditors  understand 
this  and  have  already  made  overtures  to  pay  ;  in 
fact,  I  think  that  we  can  get  between  fifty  thousand 
and  one  hundred  thousand  sestertia  for  it.  They 
must  pay  more  than  the  value  by  the  tables,  because 
they  cannot  compel  a  release." 

The  Prince  was  silent  for  a  few  minutes.  At  last 
he  said, 

"  Vindex,  I  do  not  believe  the  Princess  will  take 
the  money." 

"Why  not?" 

"  Because  she  will  think  it  is  not  right.  She  will 
be  very  firm  in  the  idea  that  everything  must  go  to 
the  creditors." 

"  Certainly,  everything  the  law  gives  them.  The 
law  does  not  give  them  the  dower  right.  It  belongs 
to  her." 

"  She  will  give  them  this  besides,"  said  the 
Prince. 

"  Then  she  will  be  a  very  foolish  woman,"  said 
Vindex,  "  and  she  will  simply  throw  away  her  prop 
erty,  at  the  very  moment  when  she  needs  it  most. 


I76  DOMESTICUS, 

The  dower  right  is  hers,  and  she  should  make  it 
worth  what  it  will  bring." 

"  You  must  talk  this  matter  over  with  the 
Princess,  yourself,"  said  the  Prince,  "  if  you  will  wait, 
I  will  send  her  to  you,  only  I  know  very  well  how 
it  will  end.  The  dower  right  will  go  to  the  creditors." 

The  Princess  and  Prima,  while  washing  the  break 
fast  things,  with  their  own  hands,  were  discussing 
plans  for  the  future ;  a  small  house,  in  the  upper  part 
of  the  island  whereon  the  Imperial  City  was  built, 
stood  on  the  lands  belonging  to  the  Prince,  and  was 
available  for  the  immediate  occupation  of  the 
family.  The  Princess  was  determined  to  quit  the 
palace,  at  once,  and  preparations  for  the  removal 
were,  already,  in  progress.  Fortunately,  she  had 
pursued  a  system  of  unusual  economy  for  some 
months  ;  the  bad  name  given  to  her  by  Domesticus 
had  made  a  kind  of  enforced  interregnum  in  the 
household  service,  •  and  old  Patella  had  been  the 
main-stay  of  the  family.  The  Prince  had  been  dis 
inclined  to  having  any  company  in  the  house,  and 
everything  having  favored  retrenchment,  the 
Princess  had  been  able  to  put  by,  out  of  the  ample 
provision  the  Prince  always  made  for  current  wants, 
a  considerable  sum,  sufficient  for  all  present  needs. 
As  she  was  never  in  debt  to  any  one,  she  was  free 
from  obligations,  and  her  savings  came  in  oppor 
tunely  in  the  present  distress. 

She  came,  at  the  call  of  the  Prince,  and  he  left 
her  alone  with  the  old  jurisconsult.  He  could 
hardly  tell  why,  but  he  did  not  care  to  be  present 


RIGHT  AX D   U'RONG  OF  DOWER.  ,-~ 

at  the  interview,  and  he  thought  he  knew  how  it 
would  end. 

The  wily  advocate  was  as  shrewd  in  his  sym 
pathies  as  he  was  in  the  more  ordinary  and  active 
duties  of  his  calling.  He  saw,  at  once,  that  the 
little  lady  expected  and  desired  no  condolence,  or 
tear-drops ;  and  after  the  customary  salutations,  he 
purposely  began,  in  a  blunt  way, — 

"  I  hear  you  intend  quitting  these  premises  at 
once." 

"  As  soon  as  possible,"  said  the  Princess.  "  I 
suppose  we  are  in  no  danger  of  being  turned  out, 
for  a  day  or  two." 

"  You  can  stay  just  as  long  as  you  choose.  It  is 
out  of  the  question  to  rent  a  palace  like  this,  at  the 
present  time.  The  summer,  which  is  just  at  hand, 
is  the  wrong  season.  A  bill  may  be  posted  in  front, 
but  until  a  tenant  is  found,  it  is  better  you  should 
remain  in  possession,  and  care  for  the  property. 
Besides,  an  occupied  house  always  rents  better  than 
a  vacant  one." 

"  I  prefer  to  go,"  said  the  Princess.  "  Our  old 
servant,  Patella,  will  care  for  everything,  and  we 
shall  avoid  the  expense  of  keeping  up  a  large 
establishment.  And  if  it  cannot  be  leased,  perhaps 
it  can  be  sold." 

"  No,"  said  Vindex,  seizing  the  first  opportunity 
of  introducing  the  subject  he  wanted  to  discuss. 
"  Neither  the  palace,  nor  any  of  the  Prince's  lands 
can  be  sold,  as  yet,  so  as  to  give  a  clear  title,  and  no 
one  will  buy  them  without  a  clear  title." 

12 


DOMESTICUS. 

"  Why  not  ?  "  asked  the  Princess,  in  some  alarm. 
"  Has  he  not  a  good  title  ?  Surely  he  came  by  them 
all  honestly." 

"  Yes,  a  good  title,  but  I  said  a  clear  title.  You 
have  a  right  of  dower  in  all  the  Prince's  lands, 
It  is  a  charge  upon  them,  and  without  your  release 
of  that  dower  right,  the  title  is  not  marketable.  No 
one  wants  to  buy  property  with  a  right  of  dower 
outstanding." 

"  I  suppose,"  said  the  Princess,  "  that  is  why  1 
have  had  to  sign  the  parchment  whenever  the 
Prince  sold  any  land,  and  say  '  yes/  to  something  a 
young  man  would  mumble  over  to  me,  after  I 
signed." 

"  Yes,  that  is  just  the  reason,  and  whenever  you 
joined  with  your  husband  in  signing,  that  act  cut  off 
your  right  of  dower,  but  none  of  these  lands  have 
been  sold,  and  so  your  dower  right  remains  your 
property,  and  the  creditors  will  pay  you  a  good 
round  sum  to  release  it." 

"  But  I  never  was  paid  a  round  sum,  or  a  square 
sum,  or  any  kind  of  a  sum,  when  I  used  to  sign 
with  the  Prince." 

"  That  was  because  he  got  the  purchase  money, 
and  you  got  your  sharer  in  support  and  mainte 
nance,  for  which  the  Prince  paid,  but  now  he  gets 
nothing  ;  he  simply  transfers  his  property  to  pay  his 
debts,  and  so  you  ought  to  be  paid  for  your  release 
of  dower." 

"  Who  is  to  pay  me  ?  " 

"  The  person  to  whom  the  Prince  conveyed  all 


RIGHT  AND   WRONG  OF  DOWER. 

his  properties  yesterday,  for  the  equal  benefit  of  all 
his  creditors." 

"  \Vlio  is  that  person  ?  " 

"Assignatus,  I  presume  you  know  him." 

"  I  know  him  very  well,"  said  the  Princess.  "  He 
was  married  the  same  week  with  the  Prince  and 
myself.  His  eldest  daughter  is  just  two  days  older 
than  Prima,  no,  let  me  see,  Prima  is  two  days  older 
than  she — well,  I  am  not  quite  sure  which  it  is." 

"  Anyway,"  said  Vindex,  "  he  is  an  excellent  man, 
and  the  creditors  have  perfect  confidence  in  him. 
All  that  remains  is  for  them  to  fix  the  sum  they  are 
willing  to  pay  you,  and  for  you  to  agree  to  it.  The 
amount  will  be  at  least  fifty  thousand  sestertia ;  they 
will  furnish  this  to  Assignatus,  and  he  will  pay  you, 
and  it  will  make  a  good  provision  for  your  wants." 

"  Why  cannot  I  have  it  in  land,"  said  the  Princess. 
"  I  remember  now,  since  you  began  to  speak  about 
this,  that  the  Princess  Vidua  had  a  house  given  her, 
and  she  told  me  it  was  admeasured  to  her  for  dower. 
It  was  over  twenty-five  feet  front,  and  had  land  on 
both  sides  of  it.  I  suppose  that  is  why  they 
measured  it." 

"  That  was  different.  Her  husband  was  dead. 
The  wife  gets  none  of  the  land,  or  the  rents,  until 
after  the  husband's  death." 

"  Then  has  the  Prince  got  to  die,  before  this  right 
is  of  any  value?  Is  all  this  on  the  idea  that  he  is 
going  to  die  ?  It  is  perfectly  dreadful !  I  don't 
want  to  talk  about  it,  or  think  about  it.  It  is  posi 
tively  cruel ! " 


DO  ME  STIC  US. 

"  You  don't  quite  understand/'  said  Vindex,  "  the 
wife  does  not,  to  be  sure,  come  into  the  full  enjoy 
ment  of  her  dower  right  till  her  husband  dies — " 

"  But  I  could  not  enjoy  anything,  if  the  Prince 
were  to  die — why  do  you  talk  to  me  in  this  way  ? 
Isn't  it  bad  enough  for  my  poor  husband  to  fail, 
without  calculating  on  his  death  ?  Indeed  I  do  not 
understand  it  at  all,  and  I  don't  want  to  understand 
it,  if  this  is  what  it  means." 

"  My  dear  lady,"  said  Vindex — who,  perceiving 
that  the  flood-gates  of  feeling  were  in  danger  of 
giving  way,  and  of  all  reason  and  common  sense 
being  swept  out  of  reach  and  sight,  paused  for  a 
moment,  and  then  resumed  on  a  new  basis, — "  I  am 
delighted  to  see  the  Prince  looking  as  well  as  he 
does  this  morning,  and  I  am  sure,  before  long,  he 
will  see  many  things  to  encourage  him.  He  is  not 
likely  to  suffer  in  health,  or  in  spirits,  permanently, 
and  what  I  am  suggesting  to  you  has  no  reference 
whatever  to  his  death.  It  is  simply  a  matter  of 
business,  and  I  will  not  trouble  you  any  further  with 
it,  if  it  is  distasteful  to  you.  I  had  not  finished 
explaining  what  it  really  was." 

"  Pardon  me,"  said  the  Princess,  "  if  I  interrupted 
you  ;  I  will  promise  to  listen;  only  you  frightened 
me  dreadfully  in  saying  what  you  did.  Now,  go 
on,  please." 

"  What  I  wanted  to  say  was  that  you  have  and 
own,  at  the  present  time,  a  right  of  dower  in  all  the 
lands  of  the  Prince.  The  law  of  the  land  gives  it  to 
you.  It  is  yours,  and  no  one's  else.  It  is  worth  a 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG  OF  DOWER.  jgi 

large  sum  of  money.  Your  husband  has  transferred 
the  lands  to  Assignatus,  as  a  trustee,  for  the  benefit  of 
his  creditors.  They  are  still  subject  to  your  dower 
right,  as  a  charge,  because  you  did  not  join  in  the 
deed  to  Assignatus,  and  unless  the  creditors  can 
have  that  charge  removed,  by  procuring  a  release 
of  your  dower  right,  from  yourself,  to  the  trustee, 
they  cannot  sell  the  lands  free  and  clear  of  it. 
Therefore,  they  want  to  pay  you  a  sum  of  money 
and  have  you  release  your  right,  in  consideration 
of  that  payment." 

"  I  think  I  understand  it  now,"  said  the  Princess. 
"  If  the  mumbling  young  man  had  come  here,  yes 
terday,  and  brought  the  parchment,  by  which  the 
Prince  transferred  the  lands  to  Assignatus,  and  I 
had  signed  it,  and  said,  '  yes ',  when  he  said  what 
ever  it  is  he  says,  then  my  dower  right  would  have 
been  gone.  Because  I  did  not  sign  and  say  '  yes/ 
I  own  it  still,  and  the  creditors  want  me  to  sign  a 
separate  parchment,  all  by  myself,  to  make  it  just  the 
same  as  if  I  had  signed,  yesterday,  with  the  Prince." 

"  That  is  precisely  the  case ;  you  have  put  it  as 
clearly  as  possible,"  said  Vindex,  delighted  to  see 
that  the  flood-gates  were  sound  and  tight,  and  that 
reason  and  good  sense  were  not  swept  away. 

11  Then  this  dower  right  is  mine,  to  keep  or  sell 
as  I  please?" 

"  Unquestionably." 

"  And  the  money  the  creditors  are  willing  to  pay 
for  it  will  be  in  my  hand,  to  do  what  I  please  with  ?  " 

"  Certainly." 


DOMESTICUS. 

"  And  when  the  creditors  get  the  separate  parch 
ment  from  me,  they  will  have  all  that  the  Prince, 
or  I,  or  both  of  us,  together,  could  possibly  give 
them." 

"  That  is  so." 

"  Then  please  prepare  the  parchment  and  send 
the  young  man,  and  I  will  sign  it,  and  say  '  yes ', 
and  there  will  be  an  end.  I  will  have  none  of  their 
money." 

"  But  my  dear  Princess  ! " 

"  Why  should  I  ?  If  I  had  the  price,  in  my  hand, 
I  should  pay  it  all  back  to  them.  If  I  had  a  mil 
lion  sestertia,  I  would  give  them,  every  one,  to  the 
Prince,  to  help  pay  his  just  debts.  Why  should  I 
not  do,  to-day,  what  I  would  have  done,  yesterday, 
without  a  word  of  question,  or  a  thought  of  pay  ? 
It  is  quite  too  late  for  me  to  be  setting  a  price  for 
signing  my  name." 

"  But,"  said  Vindex,  "  you  were  never  in  this 
plight  before.  It  was  all  right  for  you  to  sign  off, 
without  any  price,  so  long  as  your  husband  was 
selling  the  land  in  the  ordinary  course  of  dealing. 
Now,  since  he  has  failed,  it  is  very  different." 

"Am  I  to  be  better  off  because  he  has  failed?" 
asked  the  Princess.  "  It  seems  a  very  strange  thing 
that  when  a  man  fails,  the  first  thing  his  creditors 
must  do  is  to  pay  his  wife  a  great  sum  of  money." 

"  No,  you  are  not  to  be  a  bit  better  off.  Before 
the  failure  you  had  this  property,  and  you  have  it 
now,  but  the  creditors  are  not  your  creditors,  and 
they  have  to  deal  with  you  separately ;  before  the 


RIGHT  AND   WRONG  OF  DOWER.  jgj 

failure  there  was,  in  effect,  no  separation  of  your 
interest  from  your  husband's." 

"  Then,  instead  of  drawing  us  closer  together,  the 
failure  is  going  to  separate  us,"  said  the  Princess. 
"  Never,  with  my  consent !  We  have  always  been 
one  in  prosperity,  and  we  shall  cling  to  one  another 
in  adversity,  and,  I  hope,  always." 

The  flood-gates  were  loosening  again  and  the 
veteran  practitioner  began  to  fear  that  they  would 
certainly  burst  open,  with  ruinous  consequences. 
He  tried  another  tack. 

"You  would  prefer,  then,  not  to  receive  anything 
from  the  creditors  for  a  release  of  your  dower 
right?" 

"  I  will  not  take  a  single  sestertium  from  them  ; 
not  one." 

"And  of  course,"  said  the  wily  old  advocate,  "  you 
would  not  like  to  acknowledge  having  received  any 
sum,  however  small,  from  them  ?  " 

"  Of  course  not,"  said  the  Little  Lady,  walking 
into  the  trap  he  laid  for  her,  as  innocently  as  ever  a 
fly  was  enticed  into  a  spider's  web. 

"Then,"  said  he,  "you  cannot  possibly  make  the 
dower  right  over  to  them,  because  the  transfer  would 
not  be  good  unless  they  paid  something  for  it,  or,  at 
least,  you  acknowledged  having  received  some 
thing." 

"  Why  not  ?  I  recollect  when  the  Prince  gave  a 
house  and  some  land,  in  the  country,  to  his  sister, 
she  paid  nothing,  not  the  smallest  sum,  he  told  me 
so,  and  I  signed  too." 


DO  ME  STIC  US. 

"  Yes,  because  there  the  consideration  was  natural 
love  and  affection,  but  that  only  applies  between 
relations,  and  besides,  it  is  quite  inconceivable,  and 
wholly  unknown  to  the  law,  that  any  one  should 
entertain  natural  love  and  affection  for  his  creditors." 

The  Little  Lady  thought  she  had  natural  love 
and  affection  enough  for  the  whole  world,  but  to 
love  her  husband's  creditors  as  herself  was  some 
thing  of  a  strain,  even  upon  the  most  amiable  dis 
position,  and  when  she  found  that  the  consideration 
of  natural  love  and  affection  could  only  apply  be 
tween  kindred,  she  was  brought  to  a  point  where  she 
saw  she  had  been  too  sweeping  in  her  declaration 
that  she  would  not  even  acknowledge  the  receipt  of 
one  sestertium,  in  exchange  for  her  dower  right. 

This  was  all  that  Vindex  wanted,  for  the  moment. 
He  was  too  wise  to  provoke  further  controversy 
with  the  Princess,  and  as  he  wished  to  gain  time,  he 
preferred  to  retreat  from  the  contest,  in  good  order, 
under  cover  of  the  obscurity  he  had  succeeded  in 
throwing  over  the  matter,  on  the  question  of  con 
sideration. 

The  Princess  was  a  little  nonplussed,  and  the 
subject  was  dropped,  apparently  because  neither 
party  to  the  conversation  was  in  a  position  to  press 
the  point  on  which  they  had  respectively  been  per 
sistent 

"  I  want  to  ask  you  about  the  furniture,"  said  the 
Princess.  "  Ought  it  not  to  be  sold  next  Fall  ?  It 
will  bring  so  much  better  prices  then." 

Vindex  had  his  own   secret  intentions  about  the 


RIGHT  A.\n   /f'AV.Vo'  OF  DOWER.  !$$ 

furniture,  which  he  meant  to  carry  out,  for  the  bene 
fit  of  the  Princess,  at  all  hazards.  He  had  planned 
and  determined  that  she  should  never  leave  the 
palace ;  that  her  dower  right  should  provide  all 
present  means  of  support ;  that  the  furniture  should 
all  be  hers,  in  a  way  he  nuant  to  work  out;  and  that, 
in  the  end,  the  Prince's  debts  should  be  compro 
mised  and  here-in  stated,  if  not  in  his  fortune,  at  least 
in  a  competency.  He  had  found  himself  blocked 
by  the  Princess,  first,  in  her  resolve  to  vacate  the 
palace,  next,  by  her  refusal  to  receive  the  value  of 
her  dower  right,  and,  now,  she  was  suggesting 
something  which  would  be  fatal  to  his  hidden  plans 
on  her  behalf,  in  the  matter  of  the  furniture.  But 
here  he  felt  he  was  master  of  the  situation,  and  he 
meant  to  carry  things  with  a  high  hand. 

"The  furniture  may  have  to  be  sold,  under  execu 
tion,  very  soon — under  the  first  judgment  and  levy." 

"  But  that  will  sacrifice  it.  It  ought  to  bring  a 
very  large  sum.  It  is  just  as  good  as  new,  all  of  it. 
It  has  had  the  Very  best  care ;  then  there  are  all  the 
pictures,  and  statues,  and  vases,  and  ornaments — 
they  will  surely  sell  best  in  the  Fall." 

"  Images  and  gimcracks  don't  bring  half  their 
value,  at  any  time,"  said  Vindex,  "and  as  to  old  fur 
niture,  it  is  a  drug  in  the  market." 

"Images,  gimcracks,  and  old  furniture!"  Was 
this  all  that  the  eye  of  the  law  could  discern  in  the 
treasures  with  which  the  palace  of  the  Prince  was 
stored  ? 

The    Little   Lady  was  as    indignant  as  Vindex 


!86  DOMESTICUS. 

meant  she  should  be  at  his  brutal  words.  He  well 
knew  that,  next  to  the  ties  of  nature,  the  attachment 
of  the  female  heart  to  the  furniture  around  which 
the  associations  of  home  and  family  have  clustered, 
is  something  which  will  cling  to  its  object,  like  the 
carving  to  a  four-post  bedstead.  He  felt  for  her, 
but  he  was  determined  he  would  not  be  out-gener- 
aled,  this  time,  and  his  plan  was  a  pet  one,  of  his  own 
special  devising,  which  he  was  bent  on  pursuing. 

The  Little  Lady's  wrath  was  great,  but  her  lovely 
temper  checked  its  rising  waves.  She  said,  with 
evident  feeling  and  some  dignity, 

"  You  will  pardon  me  for  putting  a  higher  value 
than  perhaps  it  deserves,  on  this  part  of  the  Prince's 
property.  My  only  wish  is  to  have  it  go,  as  far  as 
may  be,  toward  paying  his  debts.  And  pardon  me 
again,  but  I  thought  you  said  there  was  no  neces 
sity  for  our  leaving  the  house,  and  if  this  is  so,  why 
is  there  any  fear  of  an  immediate  sale  ?  " 

"  But  you  say  you  will  not  remain  in  the  house ; 
and  if  you  quit,  the  judgment  creditor  may  come 
and  sell  the  furniture,  at  any  time.  He  would  very 
likely  wait,  if  you  did  not  leave."  It  occurred  to 
Vindex  that  here  was  a  string  he  might  pull  so  as 
to  detain  the  Princess  in  the  palace.  But  he  was  at 
fault,  for  she  replied,  promptly ; — 

"  No,  that  cannot  be ;  but  why  not  induce  the  first 
judgment  creditor  to  wait,  all  the  same;  he  will  get 
more  by  doing  so.  Who  did  you  say  he  was  ? 

"  He  is, — that  is,  he  was — yes, — the  name  of  the 
creditor  in  the  judgment  is  Furax,  a  very  vindictive, 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG  OF  DOWER.  \§-j 

grasping,  difficult  man  to  deal  with;  a  kind  of  man 
you  would  never  want  to  meet,  or  know  anything 
about,  or  be  under  any  obligation  to." 

"  But  surely  you  could  induce  him  to  delay,  when 
there  is  no  object  in  his  pushing  matters." 

"  I  don't  think  I  have  the  slightest  influence  over 
him,"  said  Vindex,  who  was  now  a  great  deal  more 
anxious  to  end  this  interview  with  the  Princess  than 
he  had  been  to  begin  it.  "  You  must  prepare  for 
the  worst  in  this  matter,  but,  in  the  end,  all  will 
come  right,  and  now  I  must  be  going ;  excuse  my 
detaining  you  so  long,  and  kindly  inform  the  Prince 
that  I  am  leaving,  as  I  want  a  word  with  him  before 
I  go." 

The  Princess  knew  that  a  professional  man  must 
not  be  detained,  and  she  was,  herself,  willing  to  have 
a  respite  for  reflection.  As  she  left  the  room,  the 
Prince,  who  was  in  an  adjoining  apartment,  entered, 
and  the  moment  he  was  alone  with  Vindex,  he 
asked, 

"What  success?  Will  the  Princess  accept  any 
thing  for  her  dower  right?" 

"  She  does  not  want  to.  Woman-like,  she  has 
put  herself  on  a  ground  that  does  more  credit  to 
her  heart  than  her  head.  Fortunately,  we  are  to 
have  a  breathing  spell,  and  I  have  some  ideas  out 
of  which  good  may  come,  without  going  counter 
to  her  views.  But,  my  dear  Prince,  you  must 
promise  me  one  thing,  and  keep  your  promise,  as 
you  hope  for  help  in  your  need.  Do  not,  for  the 
world,  let  the  Princess  know  that  I  control,  or  have 


!38  DO  ME  STIC  US. 

anything  to  do  with  the  judgment  of  Furax.  This 
is  absolutely  essential  for  her  good,  which,  you 
know,  I  have  close  at  heart.  As  I  told  you,  the 
claim  was  not  transferred  to  my  name,  and  so  you 
do  not  know  who  owns  it.  She  must  not  suspect 
that  I  have  the  least  interest  in  it.  Give  rne  your 
word  on  that." 

"  I  think  you  are  entitled  to  claim  this  of  me," 
said  the  Prince,  "so  I  promise  as  you  ask." 

"Very  good,"  said  the  jurisconsult,  and  he  went 
his  way  to  his  clients. 


CHAPTER   XVIII. 

LEAVING    HOME. 

Little  Lady  looked  back  on  her  interview 
1.  with  the  sagacious  Vindex  with  a  sense  of 
discomfort.  In  spite  of  his  lucid  explanation  of  the 
law  of  dower,  and  her  clear  comprehension  of  it  at 
the  time,  she  found  some  difficulty,  in  the  retrospect, 
in  keeping  the  matter  clearly  before  her  mind.  She 
appealed  to  the  Prince  for  a  solution  of  her  doubts, 
and  they  discussed  the  whole  subject,  according  to 
the  light  they  had,  which,  being  all  borrowed  from 
the  instructions  they  had  received  separately  from 
the  same  source,  was  serviceable  only  so  far  as  its 
reflected  rays  were  coincident. 

"  I  cannot  see,"  said  the  Princess,  "  how  Vindex 
could  expect  to  make  me  believe  that  your  creditors 
would  pay  me  a  large  sum  of  money  for  something 
I  have  not  got,  and  may  never  have,  and  that  I 
never  expect  to  have;  because  you  know,  dearest, 
I  want  to  die  first — and  I  know  I  shall.  He  says  it 
is  property;  but  I  cannot  divine  how  a  thing  is 
property  one  hasn't  got.  My  linen,  and  my  camel's 
hair  shawl,  and  my  laces,  and  the  jewelry  you  have 
given  me,  are  mine,  and  I  will  go  to  prison  before 
I  will  give  them  up,  because  your  creditors  have 

189 


DOMEST1CUS. 

nothing  to  do  with  them.  Why,  there  is  my  mother's 
silver  tea-service,  marked  with  my  name,  which,  if 
Prima  should  marry  and  have  a  daughter,  and  she 
should  be  named  for  me,  would  belong  to  her,  right 
off,  to  be  hers  when  I  die;  that  is  what  I  call  property. 
But  how  can  you  own  a  thing  when  it  is  all  guess 
work  whether  you  will  live  long  enough  to  have  it  ?  " 

"As  I  understand  it,"  said  the  Prince,  "it  is  the 
contingency  that  is  valued,  on  the  doctrine  of 
chances." 

"Then  it  is  nothing  more  nor  less  than  a  lottery," 
said  the  Princess ;  "  it  is  dealing  in  a  chance,  and  a 
chance  in  your  own  husband's  life.  I  felt  it  was 
something  dreadful  all  the  time.  How  these  juris 
consults,  as  they  call  themselves,  can  twist  and 
turn  things  !  I  thought  all  lotteries  were  prohibited 
by  law." 

"  I  suppose,"  said  the  Prince,  "  that  what  the  law 
allows  can  hardly  be  illegal.  Vindex  says  the  court 
has  tables  which  fix  the  value.  Now,  if  your 
contingent  dower  right  is  something  which  the  law 
recognizes,  and  if  it  lies  on  the  land,  like  a  mortgage, 
and  the  creditors  want  to  lift  it  off,  and  are  willing 
to  pay  to  get  rid  of  it,  I  should  say  it  was  all  right 
for  them  to  offer  and  for  you  to  take  the  money." 

"  It  may  be  perfectly  right,  as  you  say,"  said  the 
Princess,  "  for  them  to  offer  to  pay,  but  I  cannot  feel 
that  it  would  be  right  for  me  to  take  their  money 
and  keep  it.  If  I  were  to  pick  up  so  much  money 
in  the  street,  even  if  the  law  said  I  could  have  it,  I 
should  want  to  find  the  owner,  for  all  that;  and 


LEAVING  HOME.  igi 

if  I  couldn't  find  the  owner,  and  had  to  keep  it,  I 
should  want  to  give  it  to  you,  to  help  pay  your 
debts.  One  thing  is  certain,  Viiulcx  may  be  a  great 
jurist  on  dower  rights  and  contingencies,  but  he 
knows  nothing  about  furniture  or  pictures,  and  I 
am  afraid  he  is  a  very  heartless  man." 

"  He  is  as  good  and  true  a  friend  as  we  have  in  the 
world,"  said  the  Prince.  "  I  dare  say  he  is  not  very 
well  posted  in  upholstery  or  the  fine  arts.  He  is 
an  old  bachelor  and  belongs  to  the  kind  that  is 
satisfied  with  the  mahogany  and  hair-cloth  of  a  past 
generation." 

"  But  think  of  his  being  willing  to  have  all  the 
furniture  in  this  house  sold  in  mid-summer !  It 
will  be  thrown  away.  What  ought  the  things,  all 
taken  together,  to  bring  ?  I  will  go  to  work  with 
Prima,  to-morrow  morning,  and  make  a  complete 
list  of  everything,  with  prices,  and  send  it  to  Vindcx. 
It  may  open  his  old  eyes  to  their  value.  Why,  the 
set  in  our  bedroom  alone  ought  to  bring  nearly  as 
much  as  it  cost ;  it  ought  to  go  very  high." 

"  If  it  could  be  sold  by  weight,  it  would,"  said  the 
Prince.  "  It  weighs  several  tons." 

"  It  is  all  splendid  solid  rosewood,"  said  the 
Princess,  "just  as  different  as  possible  from  the  glued- 
together,  flimsy  things  they  make  nowadays.  I  hate 
waste.  If  Vindex  does  not  prevent  this  sale  taking 
place  at  this  season,  he  is  no  friend  of  mine.  And 
who  is  this  Furax  whom  he  says  is  so  fierce?  Do 
you  know  him  ?  " 

"  Only  by  name.     He  is  a  man  who  buys  notes 


I92 


DOMESTICUS. 


and  drafts,  and  he  had  some  of  ours.  You  had 
much  better  leave  all  this  entirely  to  Vindex.  If  the 
furniture  should  bring  all  it  cost,  it  would  be  only  a 
drop  in  the  bucket,  just  now.  Vindex  will  take  care 
of  everything." 

"  I  am  almost  afraid  of  him,"  said  the  Princess. 
"  No,  I  am  not  afraid  of  anybody,  so  long  as  I  am 
doing  right,  not  even  of  Furax ;  and  if  need  be,  I 
will  find  him  out  and  get  him  to  postpone  the  sale, 
and  save  the  furniture  from  sacrifice." 

This  was  an  alarming  suggestion,  and  the  Prince 
made  haste  to  change  the  subject,  inwardly  resolving 
to  acquaint  Vindex,  at  the  earliest  moment,  with  the 
apprehensions  and  the  intentions  of  the  Princess. 

In  the  meantime,  the  preparations  for  the  exodus 
from  the  palace  went  on  apace.  In  a  few  days  the 
Princess  was  ready  to  leave  with  all  the  articles 
which  she  determined,  after  deciding  every  doubtful 
case  against  herself,  she  had  a  right  to  carry  away 
with  her,  as  her  special  property,  or  that  of  her 
children.  The  long  list  of  the  furniture  and  other 
things,  she  prepared  with  Prima's  aid,  and  dis 
patched  to  Vindex,  according  to  the  declaration 
made  to  the  Prince,  and  by  him  communicated  to 
the  old  jurisconsult,  who,  somewhat  to  the  Prince's 
surprise,  said  it  was  just  what  he  wanted  to  have. 

When  the  morning  arrived  which  the  Princess 
had  fixed  for  her  departure,  after  giving  some  final 
instructions  to  Patella,  as  she  sat  by  herself  in  the 
room  she  had  so  long  loved  to  call  her  own,  and 
felt,  more  than  anything  else,  a  kind  of  surprise  at 


LEAVING  HOME. 


'93 


her  own  courage  in  the  moment  of  bidding  it  fare 
well,  Prima  came  in  and  said  that  the  old  servant 
was  outside  and  desired  to  speak  to  her  for  a  mo 
ment. 

"What  does  Patella  want,  Prima?  I  spent  an 
hour  with  her  after  breakfast,  down  stairs,  giving 
her  all  the  directions  about  everything." 

"  Yes,  but  since  then  she  has  dressed  herself  and 
gone  out,  and  now  she  has  come  back,  and  says  she 
has  a  great  favor  to  ask  of  you." 

"  I  hardly  know  what  favors  I  am  able  to  bestow 
on  any  one  just  now,  but  let  Patella  come  in." 

The  door  was  opened,  and  the  old  woman  entered 
with  a  quick  step,  for  she  was  light  of  foot  in  spite 
of  her  years,  and  wiry  of  frame.  But  as  she  came 
nearer  the  Princess,  she  stopped,  as  if  the  courage 
she  had  mustered  up  for  her  errand  was  almost 
failing  her ;  then,  with  a  sudden  plunge  of  her  right 
hand  into  the  depths  of  a  pocket  in  her  dress,  she 
brought  forth  a  leathern  pouch,  tied  with  a  stout 
string,  out  of  which  she  drew  a  roll  of  bills  of  the 
currency  of  the  realm,  and,  with  an  almost  convulsive 
movement,  cast  it  into  the  lap  of  the  Princess. 

"  Please,  my  lady,"  said  Patella,  "  I  have  gone  and 
got  my  money,  and  it  is  you  I  want  to  have  it.  I 
am  poor,  and  do  not  want  it,  but  a  rich  lady,  like 
yourself  has  always  been,  cannot  live  without  money 
all  the  time.  It  is  a  thousand  sestertia,  and  I  know 
very  well  it  will  all  come  back  to  me  when  I  need 
it." 

The  Little  Lady  had  borne  up  against  everything. 
13 


D  OMES  TIC  US. 

She  had  met  the  sharp  shock  of  the  failure  without 
flinching.  She  had  spurned  the  proffered  purchase 
of  her  dower  right,  almost  with  disdain.  She  had 
not  quailed  before  the  vindictiveness  of  Furax.  She 
had  nerved  herself  to  quit  house  and  home  with 
courage,  and  even  with  cheerfulness,  but  at  this  soft 
touch  of  loving-kindness  from  a  humble  heart  and 
hand,  she  gave  way  completely,  and  broke  into  a 
flood  of  tears  and  convulsive  sobs. 

Patella  was  frightened  at  this  unexpected  and 
unusual  outburst  of  feeling.  She  was  on  her  knees, 
in  an  instant,  clasping  the  hands  of  her  mistress, 
which  she  kissed  with  all  the  fervor  that  had  impelled 
her  generous  gift. 

Prima,  who  thought  she  had  never  seen  anything 
more  pathetic,  looked  on  with  moist  eyes. 

The  Princess  recovered  herself  in  a  few  moments. 
In  the  brief  interval  of  unrestrained  feeling,  she 
had  not  only  gained  a  needed  relief  from  the  over 
strain  to  which  she  had  been  subjected,  but  also 
found  courage  for  the  only  response  worthy  of  the 
generous  self-sacrifice  of  which  Patella's  proffered 
gift  was  the  perfect  fruit. 

"  I  thank  you  from  the  bottom  of  my  heart,  Patella. 
I  will  take  the  money,  gratefully,  and  you  may  be 
sure  I  will  return  it;  but  your  kindness  is  something 
that  touches  me  most  deeply,  and  this  is  a  debt  I 
fear  I  shall  find  it  hard  to  repay." 

The  old  woman  went  away  happier  than  she  had 
ever  been  in  her  life,  for  she  had  dreaded  a  repulse, 
or,  at  least,  a  refusal. 


LEAVING  HOME.  195 

When  she  was  alone  with  her  mother,  Prima  was 

the  first  to  ?pcak. 

"  I  am  so  glad  you  took  the  money.  Of  course,  I 
know  it  will  not  be  wanted  or  used,  but  it  would 
have  broken  her  heart  if  you  had  refused  it." 

"  No  money  was  ever  safer  than  this,"  said  the 
Princess,  tightening  her  clasp  on  the  roll  of  bills, 
"  and  certainly  none  was  ever  more  lovingly  lent. 
It  is  a  good  omen,  and  I  accept  it.  Deliverance 
from  these  evil  days  is  not  far  distant;  but  how 
strange  that  the  first  note  of  succor  should  have 
come  from  the  ranks  of  Domesticus ! " 


CHAPTER  XIX. 

AT  A  GREAT  SACRIFICE. 

4iT)RIMA  TO  JUVENTUS.  .  .  .  Our  new  home  is 
L  pleasant,  not  by  contrast  with  the  one  we 
have  left,  but  in  itself.  I  will  tell  you  how  to  find  it 
when  you  come  hither.  Take  the  old  broad  road 
way,  northward  beyond  the  central  campus,  on  the 
sunset  side,  until  you  come  to  a  lane,  striking  off 
toward  the  river  bank,  which  you  will  know  by  a 
round  stone  tower  at  its  corner,  and,  following  this 
lane  a  few  rods,  you  come,  on  the  right  hand  side, 
to  a  square  white  house  of  the  oldest  fashion,  on  a 
little  bluff,  with  two  willows  overhanging  the  gate. 
The  house  is  a  relic  of  the  past,  left  almost  alone. 
The  last  tenant  moved  away  in  the  spring  to  a  new 
home,  so  that  our  coming  works  harm  to  no  one. 
I  like  the  wide  outlook  which  takes  in  river,  shores, 
and  sky.  It  reminds  me  of  what  the  dear  old 
painter-poet  who  went — 

'  Piping  down  the  valleys  wild, 
Piping  songs  of  pleasant  glee,' 

wrote  to  his  '  archangel  sculptor '  friend  about  his 
little  cottage  by  the  sea :    '  Heaven  opens  here  on 
'all  sides  her  golden  gates ;   her  windows  are  not 
obstructed  by  vapors.' 
196 


AT  A   GKEA T  SACR11-R  A. 


197 


"All  are  pleased,  save  Stella.  With  her,  we  have 
had  no  end  of  trouble.  The  removal  from  the  Via 
Quinta  was  a  great  blow,  as  it  separated  her  from 
a  choice  circle  of  admirers.  In  the  midst  of  our 
hard  work  of  settling  here,  she  must  needs  go  off 
on  a  picnic  which,  off  course,  provoked  the  most 
violent  tempest  and  tornado  of  the  season,  and  the 
consequence  was  that  she  took  to  her  bed  for  a 
fortnight.  Mamma  and  I  nursed  her  through  the 
sickness,  or,  rather,  Mamma  did,  and  I  helped  a 
little.  She  was  disappointed  at  not  having  one  or  two 
leading  physicians  called  in,  and  I  think,  at  one  time, 
began  to  be  apprehensive  she  might  die  without  the 
faintest  prospect  of  a  Wake.  As  soon  as  she  got 
well,  she  went  away  for  good,  without  a  word  of 
thanks,  simply  a  good-bye,  and  we  hear,  through 
Patella,  she  has  made  a  bad  marriage.  I  thought 
her  awfully  ungrateful,  but  Mamma  says  we  must 
not  misjudge,  and  what  seems  ingratitude  in  these 
people  is  often  only  a  dread  of  appearing  to  be 
under  an  obligation,  and  she  still  thinks  there  are 
some  stray  virtues  hidden  under  all  Stella's  per- 
verseness. 

"  Papa's  affairs  are  improving.  The  old  jurisconsult 
Vindex  has  them  in  charge.  He  insists  upon  it  there 
was  no  need  .of  our  quitting  the  palace,  but  Mamma 
says  it  was  indispensable,  and  I  think  she  is  right." 

The  better  aspect  of  the  Prince's  affairs  alluded  to 
in  the  above  extract  from  Prima's  letter  was  a  cheer 
ing  fact. 


198 


DOMESTICUS. 


Vindex  had  entered,  with  all  his  energies,  upon 
the  task  of  extricating  his  old  friend  and  client  from 
the  ruin  so  suddenly  precipitated.  He  was,  at  first, 
considerably  provoked  by  the  headlong  haste  with 
which  the  Princess  had  insisted  upon  leaving  the 
palace ;  and  he  was  also  not  a  little  taken  aback  by 
her  positive  refusal  to  accept  the  proffered  payment 
for  her  dower  right.  While  he  condemned  her 
want  of  judgment,  he  could  not  help  admiring  the 
feeling  from  which  her  false  conclusions  flowed. 
Nevertheless,  he  was  fully  determined  that  no  illusive 
sentiment,  however  pure  and  praiseworthy  its  source, 
should  stand  in  the  way  of  those  absolute  and 
paramount  legal  rights  to  which  his  moral  as  well 
as  his  intellectual  vision  was  adjusted. 

He  saw  how  he  could  turn  the  strangely  illogical 
resolve  of  the  Princess  to  account,  for  her  own  ulti 
mate  good,  and  he  lost  no  time  in  calling  the  creditors 
together,  and  stating  to  them,  with  the  most  ingenu 
ous  frankness,  the  decision  she  had  made  to  decline 
their  offer  for  her  dower  right,  on  the  ground  that 
everything  should  belong  to  the  creditors,  which 
either  she  or  her  husband  could  make  over  to  them. 

This  was  a  bold  stroke.  Vindex  had  found,  by 
long  experience,  that  there  is  no  force  in  human 
affairs  so  potent  as  the  plain  truth.  "  The  truth,"  he 
was  accustomed  to  say,  "  is  always  your  best  hold. 
Honest  men  will  believe  all  you  tell  them.  Dis 
honest  men  will  believe  nothing.  Thus  the  truth 
will  serve  you,  with  the  one  class,  as  an  open  door 
through  which  your  minds  can  freely  meet,  and 


,/  /   A   GRE  1  7  SAL  K1FICE.  l^g 

with  the  other  class,  as  a  closed  screen  behind  which 
you  may  find  it  convenient  to  hide."  So  it  proved 
in  this  instance.  The  guileless  among  the  creditors 
were  in  accord  in  commending  the  action  of  the 
Princess,  to  such  a  degree  that  they  brought  them 
selves  to  the  point  of  hesitation,  if  not  unwilling 
ness,  to  take  advantage  of  her  rare  magnanimity, 
and  unitedly  disclaimed  any  disposition  to  be  unjust 
to  her,  even  at  her  own  request.  The  few  trickish 
traders  among  the  body  thought  this  show  of 
disinterestedness  a  pretence  contrived  by  the  artful 
Vindex  to  ensnare  them  to  their  disadvantage. 
They  were  in  the  dark  as  to  what  his  crooked  design 
might  be,  and  so  they  were  afraid  to  act ;  and  the 
majority  being,  as  is  usually  the  case,  honest  and 
fair-minded  men,  it  was  finally  agreed  that  the 
whole  matter  should  be  deferred  until  the  lands 
could  be  sold  to  advantage. 

Vindex  thus  gained  time,  always  the  best  ally  of 
defendants  and  debtors,  and  besides,  gained  the 
good-will  of  the  leading  creditors,  and  their  active 
sympathies  on  the  side  of  the  Princess,  in  voting 
down  the  minority  of  distrusting  malcontents. 

Having  thus  neutralized,  and  even  utilized,  the 
mistaken  action  of  the  Princess,  without  coming 
into  collision  with  her  views  or  wishes,  Vindex 
went  on  to  put  into  due  course  of  execution  his  deep- 
laid  plan  for  securing  the  furniture  of  the  palace 
for  her  benefit,  before  she  could  circumvent  him  by 
any  more  troublesome  displays  of  honest  activity 
against  her  own  interests. 


2QO  DO  ME  STIC  US. 

He  gave  orders  to  enforce  the  levy  which,  as  we 
have  seen,  had  been  made  at  the  instance  of  Furax, 
the  hostile  creditor,  who  was  the  earliest  in  the  field 
against  the  unfortunate  Prince,  whose  swift  action 
had  placed  him  ahead  of  all  the  others,  and  whose 
rights  had  been  purchased  by  Vindex,  and  were  now 
enforceable  as  he  pleased.  Accordingly,  it  was  duly 
heralded  and  proclaimed  that  the  household  furni 
ture,  pictures,  and  other  works  of  art,  and  all  the 
contents  of  the  palace,  would  be  sold  at  public  out 
cry  on  the  premises  on  the  seventh  day  after  the  first 
heralding. 

This  hostile  action  was  taken  in  the  name  of 
Furax,  according  to  the  arrangement  made  by 
Vindex  when  he  bought  the  claim.  When  it  came 
to  the  Little  Lady's  ears  it  did  not  surprise  her  at 
all.  She  did  not  believe  Vindex  had  done  a  thing 
to  stop  the  sale,  and  she  wondered,  more  than  ever, 
why  the  Prince  left  everything  in  the  hands  of  this 
old,  and,  as  she  thought,  slow-going  veteran,  instead 
of  employing  some  young  and  enterprising  juris 
consult,  who  would  find  some  way,  by  hook  or  by 
crook,  to  trip  up  Furax,  and  delay  the  sale ;  for  she 
was  so  convinced  of  the  wrong  involved  in  hastening 
it,  that  she  was  almost  ready  to  see  every  law,  divine 
and  human,  set  aside,  temporarily,  in  order  to  accom 
plish  this  just  end. 

The  Prince  seemed  to  her  strangely  indifferent 
to  the  subject,  and  as  he  persisted  in  refusing  to  inter 
fere  with  Vindex,  the  Princess  again  declared  her 
intention  of  going  in  person  to  Furax,  to  satisfy 


AT  A   GR/-.-1  /  SACRIFICE.  2OI 

him,  as  she  was  quite  certain  she  could,  that  the 
furniture  would  be  sacrificed,  to  his  great  disadvan- 
and  loss.  It  required  all  the  authority  and 
expostulation  the  Prince  could  bring  to  bear  to 
convince  her  that  this  would  be  a  breach  of  dignity 
and  decorum  which  could  not  be  allowed.  She 
finally  yielded  to  his  views,  but  could  not  forbear  a 
thrust  at  Vindex,  in  the  remark  that  it  was  passing 
strange  to  her  that  people  thought  so  much  of  him, 
when,  with  all  his  supposed  skill  and  learning,  he 
could  not  get  a  furniture  sale  postponed  for  a  few 
weeks  in  mid-summer. 

The  Prince  turned  the  matter  off  as  lightly  as  he 
could.  He  tried  to  convince  the  Princess  that  it 
was  not  of  any  vital  consequence,  at  the  risk,  which 
he  well  knew  he  took,  of  being  regarded  as  almost 
as  cold-blooded  and  heartless  as  Vindex  himself. 
The  Princess  well  knew  that  she  could  not  expect 
from  him,  or  any  of  his  unfeeling  sex,  the  full 
sympathy  she  needed  on  this  sore  subject,  or  a 
comprehension  of  feelings  they  could  not  share ; 
and  she  excused  the  Prince  because  he  was  now 
absorbed  in  new  engagements  which  were  a  part  of 
the  improved  state  of  things  to  which  Prima  had 
alluded.  His  good  standing  and  repute,  his  long 
experience  in  affairs,  and  his  mature  abilities,  had 
opened  for  him  several  opportunities  of  activity 
in  new  fields  of  enterprise,  and  even-thing  seemed 
conspiring  toward  a  better  outcome  from  his 
troubles  than  he  had  at  first  thought  possible.  At 
all  events,  present  wants,  on  a  moderate  scale  of 


202  &  OMES  TIC  US. 

living,  were  sure  to  be  supplied,  and  this  was  a  great 
relief. 

The  Little  Lady  kept  silence,  and  waited  until 
the  morning  of  the  sale  arrived;  then,  after  the 
Prince  had  gone  for  the  day,  she  said  to  Prima, 

"  I  must  go  to  the  palace,  and  I  want  you  to  go 
with  me ;  I  cannot  endure  the  thought  of  all  those 
things  being  sold  off,  without  knowing  anything 
about  it.  Everything  will  be  carted  away  to-morrow 
and  that  will  be  the  end."  And  her  eyes  filled  with 
tears. 

"  But  people  will  see  us  there,"  said  Prima. 

"  Every  one  we  know  is  in  the  country.  We  can 
double  our  veils  and  not  be  recognized,  and  Patella 
can  arrange  a  screen,  or  something,  so  that  we  need 
not  be  noticed." 

Prima  gave  way  as  she  saw  that  the  consequences 
of  checking  her  mother's  feeling  and  purpose  might 
be  perilous ;  and  on  reflection  she  saw  nothing  very 
hazardous  in  the  proposal. 

The  trip  to  the  Via  Quinta  was  easily  made  by 
the  public  conveyance  which  passed  near  the  house, 
and  they  soon  found  themselves  within  the  portals 
of  the  palace,  made  conspicuous  by  the  red  flag 
which  was  the  conventional  signal  of  a  public  sale 
in  the  Imperial  City.  "  To  this  complexion  has  it 
come  at  last,"  thought  Prima,  as  she  looked  sadly 
at  its  vengeful  color,  fluttering  over  the  threshold  of 
her  lost  home. 

With  the  ready  aid  of  Patella,  they  placed  them 
selves  behind  some  of  the  taller  pieces  of  furniture 


AT  A  GREA  T  SACRIFICE. 


203 


which  had  been  placed  in  prominence  on  the  main 
floor  of  the  palace,  so  that  they  could  see  and  hear 
what  was  going  on,  without  being  subjected  to 
unpleasant  scrutiny. 

The  Little  Lady's  judgment  as  to  the  ill-advised 
time  of  the  sale  was  borne  out  by  the  character  of 
the  attendance  it  had  invited.  The  throng  which 
invaded  the  precincts  of  the  palace  gave  little  indi 
cation  of  furnishing  appreciative  or  liberal  bidders. 
The  class  of  customers  for  the  high  grade  of  articles 
to  be  put  up  for  forced  sale  was  wholly  unrepresented. 
The  great  majority  were  evidently  drawn  to  the  palace 
by  idle  curiosity,  and,  with  the  exception  of  a  few 
who  might  be  supposed  to  belong  to  the  fraternity 
of  dealers  in  second-hand  furniture,  and  only  bought 
at  great  bargains,  there  was  no  one  who  looked 
like  a  probable  purchaser. 

In  striking  contrast  with  the  generally  common 
place  and  uninteresting  air  of  the  assemblage,  was 
the  dignified  figure  of  Vindex,  who  was  one  of  the 
earliest  comers,  and  who  was  attended  by  a  subservi 
ent  assistant  intent  on  watching  every  glance  and 
gesture  of  his  superior. 

The  outcrier,  whose  business  it  was  to  conduct  the 
sale,  announced,  after  the  distribution  of  the  lists, 
that  it  would  begin  on  the  lowest,  or  underground, 
floor  of  the  palace,  that  it  would  then  be  continued 
on  the  topmost  floor,  after  which  he  would  come 
down  stairs,  selling  the  articles  on  each  lower  floor, 
in  successive  order. 

This  announcement  had  no  sooner  been  made, 


204 


DO  ME  STIC  US. 


than  an  aggressive-looking  individual,  who  had  been 
engaged  in  inspecting  the  various  articles  displayed 
in  the  grand  apartments  on  the  main  floor,  marking 
prices  on  the  list,  and  testing  the  upholstery  by 
sitting  down  consecutively  on  all  the  chairs  and 
sofas,  called  out,  in  a  loud  tone : — 

"  This  is  a  very  queer  way  of  conducting  a  sale  ! 
Why  don't  you  start  by  selling  the  things  we  have 
come  here  to  buy,  instead  of  going  underground,  to 
begin  with  pots  and  kettles?" 

The  outcrier  of  the  Imperial  City  was  always 
ready  for  every  questioner,  either  with  the  hard 
answer  which  provoketh  wrath,  or  the  soft  answer 
which  turneth  it  away.  This  time  it  was  the  soft 
answer  which  was  forthcoming. 

"  Certainly,  by  all  means ;  we  want  everybody  to  be 
suited.  If  there  is  any  article  on  this  floor  which 
any  person  present  wants  to  have  put  up  and  sold 
immediately,  before  going  down  stairs,  we  will  put  it 
up ;  and  everything  put  up  will  be  sold  to  the 
highest  bidder." 

Nothing  could  be  fairer  than  this,  and  attention 
was  turned  to  the  aggressive  individual,  who  was  evi 
dently  disappointed  that  his  complaint  had  been  so 
promptly  and  fully  met,  and  that  he  had  been  sum 
marily  deprived  of  a  grievance ;  but  he  responded  to 
the  unexpected  invitation : 

"  Put  up  the  clock  and  candelabra  on  the  mantel 
over  there.  I  suppose  the  clock  is  warranted  to  keep 
good  time." 

"  The  clock  and  candelabra  are  put  up,"  said  the 


ATA   GREAT  SACRIFICE. 


205 


outcrier ;  "  I  will  warrant  the  clock  to  go  ahead  of 
any  clock  of  its  description  in  this  city ;  that  may 
make  it  a  little  too  fast  for  you  ;  but  any  article  that 
doesn't  suit  may  be  returned  and  the  money  will 
be  refunded.  Now  what  shall  I  have  for  the  clock 
and  candelabra?" 

"  They  cost  three  hundred  sestertia,"  said  the 
Princess,  in  a  whisper,  to  Prima ;  "  we  bought  them 
years  ago — Secundus  was  a  baby.  The  clock  never 
went  too  fast;  it  lost  a  little  sometimes,  but  not 
much." 

"  What  shall  I  have,"  repeated  the  outcrier,  "  for 
this  superb  lot — clock  and  candelabra  ?  " 

"  Fifteen  sestertia,"  said  the  aggressive  individual. 

There  was  a  faint  shriek.  It  came  from  the 
Princess,  who  could  not  resist  the  temptation  of 
stepping  from  her  hiding-place  as  the  bidding  began, 
and  to  whom  the  idea  of  associating  her  best  clock 
and  candelabra  with  this  pitiful  sum  was  a  shock  too 
great  to  endure  in  silence. 

Her  involuntary  exclamation  had  the  immediate 
effect  of  turning  upon  her  a  large  number  of  eyes, 
including  the  particularly  sharp  pair  which  were 
the  special  property  of  Vindex.  To  him  she  had 
betrayed  herself,  but  only  to  him,  and  he  made  no 
sign  of  recognition.  The  outcrier  wilfully  and 
maliciously,  as  it  seemed  to  her,  interpreted  her 
little  shriek  as  a  bid,  according  to  the  custom  of 
his  craft,  and  putting  it  at  his  own  figure,  went  on, — 

"  Twenty-five  sestertia  is  bid  by  the  lady  in  the 
veil — only  twenty-five:  make  it  thirty-five?"  And  he 


2o6  DOMESTICUS. 

turned  from  the  dismayed  Princess  to  the  aggressive 
individual,  who,  greatly  to  her  relief,  made  it  thirty- 
five,  and  the  outcrier  took  up  the  refrain, 

"Thirty-five, — only  thirty-five,  Madam, — will  you 
say  forty?" 

Before  the  Princess  could  settle,  in  her  distracted 
thoughts,  whether  keeping  perfectly  still,  or  shaking 
her  head  wildly,  or  rushing  from  the  place,  was  the 
most  effectual  way  of  escaping  the  responsibilites 
of  a  supposed  bidder,  the  attendant  of  Vindex 
called  out,  in  a  sharp  tone — 

"Two  hundred  sestertia." 

"Two  hundred — two  hundred,"  said  the  outcrier, 
accepting  the  new  bid  with  the  nonchalance  he  had 
been  cultivating  for  a  quarter  of  a  century.  "  Shall 
I  have  more  ?  Two  hundred  sestertia  is  bid." 

"  Prima,"  whispered  the  Princess,  "this  is  wonder 
ful.  It  is  the  very  figure  I  put  on  my  list.  Why 
if  everything  sells  at  this  rate,  it  will  be  perfectly 
splendid.  What  a  good-looking  man  that  is  who 
bid.  He  is  standing  close  by  Vindex." 

"I  rather  think  he  is  doing  the  bidding  of  Vindex, 
in  a  double  sense,"  said  Prima,  beginning  to  be 
puzzled  at  what  was  going  on  ;  but  the  Princess  was 
too  much  occupied  in  watching  the  proceedings  to 
notice  her  remark. 

No  one  competed  with  the  last  bidder ;  the  clock 
and  candelabra  were  knocked  down  to  him ;  his 
name  was  called  for,  and  promptly  given  as  Ignotus  ; 
the  purchase  was  recorded,  and  thereupon  the 
outcrier,  in  his  blandest  manner,  inquired  of  the 


AT  A  GREA T  SACRIFICE,  2O? 

aggressive  individual  if  there  was  anything  else  on 
that  floor  worth  two  hundred  sestertia  which  he 
would  like  to  start  at  fifteen  ?  On  this  there  was  a 
general  laugh  by  the  entire  company,  with  such 
irritating  effect  on  the  individual  that  with  some 
unpremeditated  but  forcible  expressions  of  disgust, 
he  made  a  rapid  exit  from  the  palace. 

"  I  am  so  glad  he  has  gone,"  said  the  Princess  to 
Prima.  "  To  think  of  his  trying  to  get  those  things 
for  fifteen  sestertia !  He  cannot  be  an  honest  man. 
It  would  have  been  no  better  than  stealing." 

No  further  objection  being  interposed  to  the 
order  of  sale  indicated  at  the  beginning  by  the  out- 
crier,  everybody  descended,  in  good  humor,  to  the 
lower  parts  of  the  house,  the  Princess  being  now 
thoroughly  aroused  by  the  auspicious  episode  of 
the  first  bidding,  and  Prima  being  very  curious  to 
watch  the  progress  of  events,  which  she  suspected 
was  being  shaped  by  Vindex. 

The  first  lot  put  up  for  sale,  below  stairs,  was 
a  collection  of  old  pails  and  saucepans,  which  the 
Princess  told  Prima  were  not  worth,  all  together,  more 
than  a  single  sestertium.  But  no  sooner  were  they 
offered  for  sale,  and  before  an  ancient  boarding- 
house  keeper  who  had  come,  in  her  best  outfit,  to 
bid  especially  for  these  articles,  had  the  opportunity 
of  saying  a  word,  Ignotus  bid  two  sestertia,  and  they 
were  knocked  down  to  him,  no  one  competing;  and 
so  on,  as  each  succeeding  lot  was  exposed,  he 
promptly  offered  twice  its  possible  value,  and  be 
came  the  purchaser,  to  the  great  amazement  of  the 


208  DOMEST1CUS. 

disinterested  spectators,  the  consternation  of  the 
intending  bidders,  and  the  mute  wonder  of  the  Prin 
cess  and  Prima. 

By  the  time  the  list  of  the  down-stairs  articles  had 
been  gone  through,  the  entire  property  in  that  part 
of  the  premises,  which  would  have  been  dear  at  two 
hundred  and  fifty  sestertia,  had  been  sold  for  five 
hundred.  It  began  to  be  apparent  to  the  whole 
company  that  there  was  no  chance  for  any  one  to 
compete  with  such  a  bidder  as  Ignotus,  whose 
readiness  to  part  with  his  money  seemed  a  conclu 
sive  indication  that  he  had  parted  with  his  senses  at 
some  prior  period,  and  whose  determination  to  buy 
everything,  at  twice  its  value,  made  it  a  waste  of 
time  for  any  one  else  to  assist  further  at  such  a 
farcical  performance.  The  professional  dealers,  see 
ing  that  there  were  no  bargains  to  be  hoped  for,  did 
not  care  to  mount  to  the  top  story,  and  took  them 
selves  off;  and  as  to  the  small  remnant  of  the  com 
pany  who  made  the  long  ascent  to  the  upper 
regions,  it  seemed  to  the  Princess,  as  she  surveyed 
them,  that  they  were  all  mere  lookers-on  at  the 
reckless  prodigality  of  Ignotus. 

The  outcry  was  recommenced ;  and  again  he  bid 
off  everything,  as  fast  as  it  was  set  up  for  sale.  Old 
bedsteads,  tables,  chairs,  and  washstands,  hardly 
worth  carting  away,  were  struck  off  to  him  at 
prices  for  which  they  could  have  been  replaced 
twice  over  by  brand-new  articles  of  the  same  de 
scription.  He  made  a  clean  sweep,  giving  no  one 
else  a  chance  for  so  much  as  a  soap-dish  or  a  slop- 


AT  A   GREA  T  SACRIFICE.  209 

pail ;  and  by  the  time  the  descent  to  the  third  story 
was  made,  the  effect  of  his  selfish  monopoly  of  pur 
chasing  had  been  to  drive  every  one  from  the  sale, 
except  a  mere  handful  of  idlers,  in  whom  the  expe 
rienced  eye  of  the  outcrier  discerned  only  the  un 
mistakable  non-bidders  who  hang  about  salesrooms 
with  no  ability  or  intention  to  buy. 

At  this  stage,  and  with  as  much  formality  as  if 
the  original  crowd  before  which  the  outcry  was 
begun  were  still  present,  he  announced  that  if  any 
person  desired  any  particular  article  on  the  third 
floor,  or  elsewhere  in  the  palace,  to  be  separately  set 
up,  it  should  be  done ;  if  not,  he  was  instructed  to 
say  that  the  whole  remaining  contents  of  the  pal 
ace,  as  set  forth  in  the  list,  would  be  now  put  up 
as  one  lot,  and  sold  together.  The  small  cluster  of 
people  who  had  remained,  solely  for  further  partici 
pation  in  what  seemed  to  them  the  good  joke  of 
Ignotus  wasting  his  money,  had  no  possible  con 
cern  in  opposing  any  method  of  sale  which  seemed 
good  to  the  outcrier,  and  they  made  no  response  to 
his  inquiry,  whereupon  he  immediately  put  up,  in  a 
single  lot,  everything  in  the  palace  which  had  not 
been  previously  sold. 

Ignotus,  with  customary  promptness,  bid  five 
hundred  sestertia. 

Dead  silence  followed  for  a  moment,  broken  by  a 
sharp  cry  from  the  Princess. 

"  Five  hundred  sestertia !  Why  they  are  worth 
fifteen  thousand  !" 

"  Do  I  hear  fifteen  thousand  ?  "  said  the  outcrier, 
"4 


2io  DOMESTICUS. 

turning  his  swift  professional  glance  on  the  Princess. 
"  Fifteen  thousand, — shall  I  have  more  ?  Make  it 
sixteen  ?  Going  at  fifteen  thousand." 

"  No,  no ! "  cried  the  Princess,  in  terrible  confusion, 
flying  toward  the  nearest  door  opening  into  the 
rear  hall-way. 

"  Five  hundred,  then,"  said  the  imperturbable 
outcrier,  "  the  lady  in  the  veil  withdrawing  her  bid 
and  herself  too."  A  remark  by  no  means  intended  to 
be  disrespectful,  but  only  by  way  of  keeping  up  that 
constant  practice  of  jocularity  supposed  to  be  the 
first  requisite  of  a  successful  outcrier.  Then  he  rang 
the  changes  and  exhausted  every  inflection  on  the 
five  hundred  sestertia  bid  by  Ignotus,  and  ended  by 
knocking  down  to  him  the  entire  remaining  contents 
of  the  palace  for  this  sum.  Adding  this  to  his  pre 
vious  biddings,  the  total  purchases  amounted  to 
about  fifteen  hundred  sestertia,  which  Ignotus  paid 
on  the  spot,  in  the  currency  of  the  realm,  and  the 
sale  was  declared  at  an  end. 

The  Little  Lady  did  not  recover  from  the  shock 
she  had  sustained  for  a  considerable  time.  The 
sudden  set  back  from  the  flood  tide  of  over-values 
to  the  dead  low-water  mark  of  that  contemptible  five 
hundred  sestertia  had  almost  deprived  her  of  her 
senses.  When  she  came  to  herself  and  re-entered 
the  apartment,  she  found  that  everything  was  over ; 
the  outcrier  had  gone,  and  nothing  was  to  be  seen  of 
Vindex  or  his  attendant. 

"  I  suppose,  Patella,"  said  the  Princess,  "  they 
will  be  coming  for  everything  to-morrow." 


AT  A   GREA T  SA CRII-R YT.  2 1 1 

"No,  my  lady,  just  as  they  were  going  out,  the 
old  gentleman  with  the  bright  eyes, — you  mind  who 
I  mean — " 

"  Yes,  yes,  what  of  him  ?  " 

"  He  came  to  me  and  handed  me  this,"  showing 
a  handsome  guerdon  in  the  standard  currency,  "and 
said: — '  Keep  everything  safe,  as  you  would  for  your 
mistress,  nothing  is  to  go  away  ' — and  then  he  turned 
on  his  heel  and  went  with  the  rest  of  them." 

"  What  does  all  this  mean  ?  "  said  the  Princess, 
turning  to  Prima. 

"  I  cannot  imagine,"  said  Prima,  "  but  I  am  very 
sure  Vindex  knows  all  about  it." 

"  Then  it  is  infamous !  How  can  he  know  all 
about  it,  unless  he  is  a  traitor  to  your  father?  Let 
us  get  home,  as  quickly  as  possible,  and  see  what 
can  be  done  this  evening  to  prevent  this  fearful  sac 
rifice." 

The  Prince  came  home  with  a  beaming  face  ;  he 
brought  a  large  and  well-filled  envelope,  sealed  with 
several  seals,  and  directed  to  the  Princess,  which  he 
said  Vindex  had  charged  him  to  deliver  to  her. 

The  name  of  Vindex  was  distasteful  to  the  Prin 
cess,  in  her  present  frame  of  mind  ;  she  handed  the 
package  to  Prima,  who  opened  it  and  produced  a  bulky 
document,  which  the  Princess  instantly  recognized 
as  the  voluminous  list  prepared  by  Prima  and  her 
self,  which  she  had  forwarded  to  Vindex  with  her 
own  hand. 

"  What  does   he  want  to  send  that  back  for  ?  It 


212 


DOMESTICUS. 


is  of  no  use  now,"  said  the  Princess,  with  unwonted 
bitterness  in  her  tone.  "  Why  add  insult  to  in 
jury?" 

"  But,  Mamma,  there  is  something  else  here,  fas 
tened  to  the  list,  in  front  of  it.  It  is  partly  in  writing 
and  partly  in  print" 

The  Prince  put  on  his  eye-glasses  and  looked 
carefully  at  the  paper. 

"  It  is  a  bill  of  sale,"  said  he.  "You  had  better 
read  it." 

The  Princess,  whose  curiosity  was  greatly  excited 
by  the  return  of  her  list,  took  the  document  and 
began  to  read : — 

" '  Know  all  men  by  these  presents  that  .1,  Igno- 
tus/ — why  that  is  the  very  man  who  bought  every 
thing  !  "  exclaimed  the  Princess. 

Her  husband  pricked  up  his  ears.  "  How  could 
the  Princess  know  that,"  he  said  to  himself,  "when 
the  sale  only  took  place  this  morning?"  But  he 
would  not  interrupt  the  reading,  and  the  Princess 
continued, — 

"  '  For  and  in  consideration  of  the  sum  of  one 
sestertium,  to  me  in  hand  paid  by' — bless  me, 
here  is  my  own  name !  What  a  falsehood !  I 
never  paid  him  anything, — '  the  receipt  whereof  is 
hereby  acknowledged,  have  bargained,  sold,  as 
signed,  transferred,  and  set  over,  and  by  these  pres 
ents  do  bargain,  sell,  assign,  transfer  and  set  over 
to/— here  comes  my  own  name  again — 'All  the 
household  furniture,  effects,  pictures,  statues,  works 
of  art,  ornaments,  and  property  of  every  description, 


AT  A  GREAT  SACRIFICE. 


2I3 


particularly  specified  in  the  annexed  list  marked 
A,' — that  is  my  list,  which  is  all  correct  enough, 
as  Prima  and  I  know  very  well,  but  what  business 
has  this  Ignotus  with  it  ? — '  To  have  and  to  hold  the 
same,  and  every  part  and  parcel  thereof — how  per 
fectly  absurd!  as  if  I  or  anybody  else  could  hold 
such  a  great  mass  of  stuff? — 'To  her,  her  execu 
tors,  administrators,  and  assigns  forever' — that  is 
dreadfully  irreverent,  because  nobody  can  have 
things  forever.  Prima,  what  does  all  this  mean  ?  Oh, 
dear!  can  it  be  because  I  cried  out  fifteen  thousand, 
when  Ignotus  said  five  hundred  ?  Are  we  all  lost?  " 

The  Prince  pricked  up  his  ears  again,  but  before 
he  could  speak,  Prima  clapped  her  little  hands  and 
exclaimed : — 

"  I  think  I  see  through  it  all.  Ignotus  was  Vin- 
dex,  and  Vindex  was  Furax,  and  somehow,  Vindex 
has  got  the  claim  of  Furax,  and  has  arranged  to 
have  the  sale  at  this  dull  time  and  to  manage  the 
biddings,  just  in  the  way  they  were  managed,  so  as 
to  get  all  the  furniture  at  a  low  price,  and  now  he 
has  turned  over  every  bit  of  it  to  you.  Of  course, 
you  will  have  to  pay  him  the  money  Ignotus  bid, 
but  it  is  a  very  small  sum,  compared  to  what  the 
things  are  worth,  and  Vindex  will  wait  for  it,  because 
he  is  your  friend  and  papa's." 

"  But  it  is  downright  dishonesty,"  said  the  Prin 
cess. 

"  Why  is  it  ?  "  asked  the  Prince. 

"  Because  the  creditors  will  not  get  the  full  value 
of  the  furniture,"  said  the  Princess.  "  It  does  seem 


2I4 


DOMESTIC  US. 


to  me  as  if  Vindex  were  trying  to  cheat  them  all  the 
time,  under  pretence  of  doing  something  for  me." 

"  But  see,"  said  the  Prince, "  it  doesn't  harm  them 
in  the  least  The  sale  was  a  public  one,  and  duly 
heralded,  and  if  they  wanted  the  furniture,  all  they 
had  to  do  was  to  go  and  bid  for  it,  and  buy  it  if 
they  could.  Furax  was  so  keen  that  he  got  ahead 
of  the  others,  and  if  they  had  bid  at  the  sale  it 
would  only  have  been  for  his  benefit,  or  the  benefit 
of  the  present  owner  of  his  claim,  because  until  that 
was  paid,  nothing  would  go  to  the  other  creditors. 
As  all  the  furniture  at  full  value  did  not  equal 
his  debt,  they  kept  away  and  are  not  hurt  by 
the  sale.  Prima  has  guessed  correctly ;  it  was  a 
scheme  of  Vindex,  to  save  everything  for  you,  with 
out  doing  the  slightest  injury  to  anybody  else,  and 
so  the  furniture  is  yours  by  a  perfectly  valid  title." 

"  I  don't  understand  it,"  said  the  Princess.  "  There 
is  too  much  circumlocution  and  gibberish  about  it 
to  suit  me." 

"  I  understand  it,"  said  Prima,  "  and  I  believe  it 
is  all  perfectly  right.  Furax  cannot  complain  ;  he 
got  all  he  was  entitled  to  when  he  sold  his  claim  to 
Vindex ;  the  creditors  cannot  complain,  because 
they  did  not  choose  to  attend  the  sale,  and  they 
would  have  got  nothing  if  they  had  attended  it." 

"  This  bill  of  sale,  as  you  call  it,"  cried  the  Prin 
cess,  after  a  pause,  "  is  not  valid,  after  all!  I  know 
that  by  what  Vindex  told  me  himself.  I  have  not 
paid  anything,  ever,  to  this  Ignotus,  and  nothing  is 
valid  unless  you  pay,  except  there  is  natural  love 


AT  A   GREA T  SA CRIFICE.  2 1  5 

and  affection  about  it,  and  I  haven't  got  any  of  that 
for  Ignotus,  and  I  never  could  have,  because  he  is 
not  one  of  my  relations." 

"  Vindex  has  taken  care  of  that,"  said  the  Prince. 
"  When  he  handed  me  these  papers  he  asked  me  to 
pay  him  a  sestertium  on  your  account,  and  I  paid 
him." 

"  But  that  is  not  paying  it  to  Ignotus." 

"No;  but,  don't  you  see,  Ignotus  has  acknowl 
edged  receipt  of  it  in  the  bill  of  sale,  and  that  binds 
him." 

The  Princess  was  silenced.  Vindex  was  a  cruel 
and  ruthless  benefactor. 

"  Then  all  that  diving  down  below  stairs,  and 
mounting  to  the  top  floor  and  out-bidding  every 
body,  was  a  contrivance  of  Vindex.  I  didn't  think 
at  the  time  it  was  a  fair  sale." 

"  How  could  you  think  anything  about  it?  "  cried 
the  Prince ;  "  you  were  not  there." 

"I  was  there,"  said  the  Princess;  and  then  the 
whole  story  was  told,  at  first  to  the  dismay  of  the 
Prince,  but  finally  to  his  great  entertainment,  as  the 
graphic  description  of  the  Princess  and  Prima 
brought  the  whole  scene  before  him. 

"  There  is  no  help  for  it,"  said  he,  when  their 
tale  was  told.  "  The  furniture  is  yours,  in  spite  of 
yourself." 

"I  suppose  I  must  submit,"  said  the  Princess; 
"  what  can  a  poor  ignorant  woman  do  against  a 
cunning  old  jurisconsult?  He  has  turned  the 
tables  upon  me." 


2 1 6  D  0  ME  STIC  US. 

"  He  has  turned  a  whole  house  full  of  furniture  on 
you,  mamma,"  said  Prima ;  "  and  it  is  all  yours,  and 
by  good  right,  and  not  a  piece  need  ever  go  out  of 
your  possession.  I  think  what  Vindex  has  done  is 
immensely  clever  and  immensely  kind,  and  I  shall 
always  love  him,  next  to  you  and  papa,  and  the 
children — and  Juventus." 

"  How  pleased  Patella  will  be  !  "  said  the  Princess. 

And,  by  this  final  and  unselfish  remark,  she  gave 
an  unconscious  attestation  to  the  truth  that  in  the 
wonderful  intertwining  of  human  sympathies  and 
affairs  the  highest  and  the  lowliest  may  meet  on  the 
common  ground  of  the  heart. 


CHAPTER   XX. 

THE    IMPERIAL   CITY'S   SHAME. 

IF  anything  in  the  progress  of  this  truthful  story 
may  have  raised  the  presumption  that  it  has  sev 
eral  purposes,  it  is  certainly  free  from  the  imputa 
tion  of  having  any  plot.  It  is  lacking  in  the  first 
essential  requisite  of  a  leading  villain,  unless  this 
role  is  to  be  ill-naturedly  attributed  to  Domesticus. 
Our  good  Prince,  with  all  his  misfortunes,  was 
never  involved  in  the  meshes  of  a  secret  marriage, 
or  any  other  entangling  alliance,  in  advance  of  his 
union  with  the  Little  Lady,  and  there  is  no  discarded 
or  concealed  wife,  or  avenging  female  fury,  to  be 
sprung  upon  the  Princess,  or  the  reader,  at  any 
critical  point  in  these  pages.  The  path  of  the  Little 
Lady  was  like  the  shining  light,  and  so  there  is  not 
an  element  of  that  whole  intricate  sphere  of  cross- 
purposes  and  counter-crimes  which  makes  the 
modern  detective  and  the  Divorce  Court  the  novel 
ist's  best  friends,  from  which  an  incident  can  be 
drawn  to  throw  its  startling  hues  against  the  sober 
background  of  the  well-attested  facts  which  are  the 
basis  of  this  truthful  narrative. 

As  an  offset  to  these  confessed  imperfections,  it 
may  perhaps  be  well  pleaded  that  the  period  of  time 

217 


2i  8  DO  ME  STIC  US. 

between  the  birth  of  the  Little  Lady  and  the  point 
at  which  we  have  now  arrived,  with  all  its  vicissi 
tudes,  has  been  traversed  with  unexampled  rapidity ; 
that  the  loves  of  Juventus  and  Prima,  tempting  a 
digression  into  a  field  as  flowery  and  as  unlimited 
as  their  own  correspondence,  have  been  rigidly, 
almost  rudely,  condensed  into  the  smallest  compass  ; 
and  that  the  martial  exploits  in  the  field,  the  hard 
service  in  the  camp,  and  the  occasional  suffering  in 
the  hospital,  of  our  young  soldier,  have  been  kept 
wholly  out  of  sight.  If  a  great  deal  of  time  has 
been  covered,  and  many  years  have  been  unrolled  in 
the  panorama,  I  have  not  paused  to  dwell  upon  the 
details  of  their  progress,  or  to  divert  the  interest 
which  it  is  hoped  may  have  attached  to  the  par 
ticular  fortunes  we  are  following,  and  which  must 
tax,  a  little  longer,  the  indulgence  of  the  reader. 

Juventus  had  found  active  service  and  speedy 
promotion.  He  had  escaped  fatal  disaster.  He  had 
met  with  a  due  share  of  rough  handling,  of  hair 
breadth  escapes,  and  perilous  enterprises.  With  the 
exception  of  an  occasional  flying  visit  to  the  Im 
perial  City,  he  had  been,  during  the  first  two  years 
of  his  service,  continuously  on  duty.  The  news  of 
the  misfortunes  of  the  Prince  reached  him  in  the 
distant  camp,  far  down  the  eastern  coast  of  Magna 
Patria,  where  his  division  of  the  great  army  of  the 
Sisterhood  was  entrenched,  and  from  which  he  sent 
to  Prima  the  expression  at  once  of  his  regret  for 
the  mischance  which  had  come  to  the  Prince, 
whose  foreboding  farewell  he  had  never  forgotten, 


THE  IMPERIAL   CITY'S  SHAME.  2\g 

and  his  satisfaction  at  feeling  that  he  was  now, 
more  than  ever,  himself  charged  with  the  duty  of 
protecting  and  caring  for  her. 

Dark  days  had  come  in  the  progress  of  the  fierce 
struggle,  in  which  he  and  so  many  brave  spirits 
were  bearing  the  brunt  of  the  desperate  onset  now 
made  with  renewed  fury  upon  the  forces  of  the 
Sisterhood.  The  strife  had  long  ago  reached  the 
full  measure  and  stature  of  a  civil  war,  and  now  the 
theatre  of  two  of  the  main  contending  armies  was 
north  of  the  invisible  line.  A  strong  invading 
force,  led  by  the  foremost  rebel  chieftain,  had 
crossed  the  border,  and  was  offering  battle  on  the 
fair  fields  and  among  the  hitherto  peaceful  valleys 
of  the  upper  side.  It  was  at  this  juncture,  on  the 
eve  of  an  impending  combat  which  might  be  decis 
ive  of  the  fate  of  the  Sisterhood,  in  the  seventh 
month  of  the  third  year  in  which  the  cruel  strife 
had  been  raging,  that,  of  a  sudden,  the  darkest 
cloud  which  ever  burst  over  the  Imperial  City  dis 
charged  its  fatal  bolts,  and  wrapped  the  great 
metropolis  in  its  dismal  folds. 

The  city  had  been  more  than  loyal  to  the  good 
cause.  It  had  given  without  stint.  It  had  stood 
between  an  empty  Treasury  and  bankruptcy.  It 
had  stopped  the  mouths  of  traitors  and  traducers. 
It  had  sent  its  many  well-equipped  cohorts  and 
legions  to  the  front.  It  had  done  all  things 
well  and  nobly.  But  now  the  long  waste  of  the 
war  was  taxing  to  the  utmost  the  resources  of 
the  whole  land.  The  red  hand  of  carnage  clutched 


2  2Q  D  OMES  TIC  US. 

\vhatever  was  needed  to  feed  the  devouring  flame  it 
had  kindled.  More  money  and  more  men  was  the 
daily  cry.  The  only  real  money,  the  gold  and 
silver,  had  been  drained  off  over  sea,  or  had  disap 
peared  out  of  sight.  Paper  promises  of  the  Sister 
hood  passed  from  hand  to  hand  in  their  place. 

But,  while  paper  money  might  pass  for  real  money, 
there  was  no  such  thing  as  filling  the  ranks  of  the 
fighters  with  paper  men.  Only  real  men  would 
answer  for  this  greatest  need,  and  when  the  belliger 
ents  would  pause,  after  a  pitched  battle,  reeking 
with  blood  and  ghastly  with  wounds,  to  reckon  the 
number  of  their  killed,  wounded,  and  missing,  by 
the  score  of  thousands,  sometimes  to  reach  the 
frightful  aggregate  of  two  score  thousand  on  both 
sides,  no  wonder  that  men  were  more  and  more 
needed  to  fill  the  depleted  ranks.  Voluntary  en 
listment  had  been  unexampled,  but  the  day  came 
when  the  call  for  involuntary  service  was  inevitable. 
Then  it  was  that  a  great  outcry  made  by  some 
voices  in  high  places,  denouncing  conscription,  was 
caught  up  by  demagogues,  and  echoed  in  lower 
places,  while  in  the  Imperial  City,  in  the  very  lowest 
places,  it  came  to  be  the  secret  rallying  cry  of  dis 
affection  and  traitorous  plots,  the  potent  germ  of  a 
wild,  volcanic  outbreak. 

"  Conscript "  was  a  hateful  word,  and  conscription 
was  a  hated  thing.  Mixed  with  the  hatred  was  the 
secret  working  of  a  concealed  bitterness  which  found 
in  this  depth  of  hate  a  lower  depth,  in  a  hatred  of 
the  cause  the  conscript  would  be  called  to  serve. 


THE  IMPERIAL  CITY'S  SHAME.  22l 

At  last,  the  day  came  round  when  the  drawing  of 
conscripts  for  the  ranks  of  the  army  must  begin  in 
the  Imperial  City.  A  great  wheel  was  to  be  set  up 
containing  the  names  of  all  citizens,  between  twenty 
and  forty-five  years  of  age,  with  such  exceptions 
as  public  functionaries,  only  sons  of  widows  de 
pendent  upon  them  for  support,  and  others  so 
situated  as  to  make  exemption  a  humane  necessity. 
This  wheel  was  to  be  turned  in  public,  and  the  names 
were  to  be  drawn  by  a  blindfolded  ministrant,  and 
when  drawn  the  persons  they  indicated  were  bound 
to  two  years  of  military  service,  unless  they  could 
furnish  a  suitable  substitute  in  the  person  of  an 
able-bodied  man,  or  could  pay  a  stipulated  sum,  far 
beyond  the  means  of  the  ordinary  workingman 
whose  daily  labor  was  the  sole  source  of  his  support. 

The  excitement  was  intense.  It  was  said  that  here 
was  a  great  wrong  thrust  upon  the  people.  The 
turn  of  the  fateful  wheel  would  instantly  wrest  many 
a  poor  and  honest  man  from  wrife,  and  children,  and 
home,  and  from  the  peaceful  industry  which  sup 
ported  his  needy  family,  to  hurl  him  to  the  battle 
field,  the  hospital,  the  grave.  The  rich  could  pur 
chase  exemption  with  money ;  the  poor  were  help 
less  as  sheep  sold  in  the  shambles. 

Nevertheless,  few  of  those  persons  who  denounced 
the  drawing  were  disposed  to  resist  it  by  force. 
There  were  mutterings  of  discontent,  but  no  open 
calls  for  concerted  opposition.  At  the  appointed 
hour,  a  thousand  citizens  gathered  about  the  door 
of  the  building  in  which  the  great  wheel  began  to 


222  DO  ME  STIC  US. 

turn  in  the  presence  of  the  smaller  number  of  spec 
tators  who  had  been  admitted  to  witness  the  draw 
ing,  and  the  blindfolded  official  went  on  in  the  dis 
charge  of  his  duty,  undisturbed  and  uninterrupted, 
save  by  the  occasional  jokes  and  jeers  with  which  the 
names,  as  they  were  drawn,  were  recognized  and 
commented  on  by  the  bystanders.  The  crowd 
was  orderly  and  quiet,  and  twelve  hundred  names, 
in  all,  were  drawn  and  announced  in  public  hearing, 
and  then  deposited,  for  safe-keeping,  in  an  iron 
chest,  and  the  day's  work  was  ended. 

Before  the  next  day  fixed  for  the  drawing  had 
dawned,  a  different  state  of  things  was  impending. 

Soon  after  its  sunrise,  a  body  of  workmen  met, 
according  to  a  preconcerted  plan,  and  began  a 
round  of  visits  to  the  various  factories,  yards  and 
workshops,  on  the  eastern  side  of  the  Imperial  City, 
compelling  the  laborers  to  break  off  from  their  work, 
and  to  join  them  in  their  march  to  the  place  where 
the  hated  drawing  was  to  be  resumed  and  continued. 
Reinforced  by  willing  or  by  impressed  recruits,  a 
vast  body  was  soon  in  motion,  made  up  of  the  com 
pact  nucleus  of  workmen  and  the  loose  material 
of  the  streets,  which  always  makes  haste  to  swell  the 
dimensions  of  a  mob.  It  halted  in  front  of  the 
building,  within  which  the  wheel  had  already  begun 
to  revolve,  and  it  was  soon  evident  that  a  counter 
revolution  had  begun  without. 

There  was  a  short  pause,  the  momentary  lull  which 
precedes  the  bursting  of  a  storm,  and  then,  with  head 
long  fury,  and  wild  cries,  and  a  thick  cloud  of  mis- 


THE  IMPERIAL  CITY'S  SHAME. 


223 


siles,  the  mob  hurled  itself  against  the  doors,  broke 
into  the  enclosure,  and  rouled  the  handful  of  enroll 
ing  officers,  who  fled  in  dismay  with  battered  heads 
and  limbs,  and  fearful,  if  not  fatal,  bruises.  The  in 
vaders  vainly  battered  the  iron  chest  in  search  of 
i  he  list  of  conscripts,  to  destroy  it.  Failing  of  this, 
they  tore  into  shreds  the  books  and  papers  of  the 
officials,  broke  in  pieces  the  implements  they  had 
used,  and  scattered  them  among  the  hooting  crowd 
outside,  who,  all  alive  with  a  demoniac  frenzy, 
engendered  by  the  first  outburst  of  violence,  kindled 
flaming  brands  and  torches,  and  set  fire  to  the  build 
ing,  tenanted  though  it  was  by  persons  wholly 
unconnected  with  the  conscription,  and  burned  it 
to  ashes,  keeping  off,  by  brute  force,  the  brave 
rescuers  who  came  in  the  way  of  their  appointed 
duty,  and  at  the  risk  of  life,  to  extinguish  the 
flames. 

The  news  of  this  lawless  outbreak  spread  through 
the  city  which  went  wild  with  excitement.  It  had 
been  in  peril,  years  before,  when  the  pestilence 
which  walked  in  darkness  and  wasted  at  noonday 
threatened  a  fearful  destruction.  Later  on,  the 
fierce  flames  had  swept  it  with  a  conflagration, 
known  in  its  history,  ever  after,  as  "  the  great  fire," 
but  never  had  it  seen  such  a  day  as  this,  the  deepest 
disgrace  of  which  was  the  inability  to  cope  with, 
and  stamp  out,  at  a  moment's  note  of  alarm,  this 
rising  insurrection.  The  pressing  needs  of  the 
relentless  strife  had  drawn  away  the  soldiery ;  the 
civic  force,  well  ordered,  well  appointed,  bravely 


224 


DO  ME  STIC  US. 


and  wisely  handled,  and  all  sufficient  for  the  ordi 
nary  needs  of  daily  service,  was  inadequate  to  the 
task  of  a  campaign  against  an  organized  revolt 
which,  with  its  swift  contamination  of  infectious 
rage,  was  about  to  turn  the  Imperial  City  from  a 
peaceful  community  of  law-abiding  citizens,  into  a 
jungle  where  wild  beasts,  in  howling  packs,  were 
lurking  for  their  prey  and  thirsting  for  blood. 

The  mob  which  had  sacked,  and  pillaged,  and 
fired  the  enrolling  bureau,  flushed  with  its  first  vic 
tory,  and  inflamed  with  its  own  fury,  rushed,  under 
the  lead  of  its  organizers,  to  storm  a  great  depot  of 
arms,  in  the  Via  Secunda,  one  of  the  leading  avenues 
in  the  quarter  where  the  first  movement  had  been 
made.  To  plunder  this  place,  and  to  put  the 
weapons  of  attack  into  the  hands  of  the  mob,  would  be 
to  improvise  an  invading  army  which  could  occupy 
that  whole  densely  populated  district  of  the  city  as 
a  base.  The  building  was  bravely  defended  by  a 
little  band  of  keepers.  A  shot  was  fired  from 
within,  upon  the  lawless,  attacking  party,  and  a 
workman  who  was  in  its  front  rank  fell  mortally 
wounded.  This  was  the  signal  for  a  general  on 
slaught.  The  maddened  crowd,  with  a  battle  cry 
of  curses  and  armed  with  sledges,  bludgeons,  and 
hammers,  broke  down  doors,  windows,  and  barriers ; 
pelted  the  garrison  with  paving  stones ;  flung  their 
blazing  brands  into  the  building;  and  in  less  than  an 
hour  it  was  a  mass  of  inextinguishable  flames. 

And  now  the  evil  spirit  of  brute  violence  was  all 
abroad.  It  stirred  into  swift  activity  the  vilest 


THI-:  i.Mrr.RiAf.  CITY'S  SHAME. 


225 


instinct,  the  blood-scent  of  which  was  foci  by  a  sense 
less  hatred  of  the  race  whose  wrongs  were  wrapped 
up  in  the  encircling  horrors  of  the  war.  This  was 
let  loose  to  fasten  its  cruel  fangs,  all  at  once  and  in 
this  hour  of  darkness,  upon  such  poor,  helpless  ob 
ject^  of  its  rage  as  were  unwarned  of  their  sudden 
peril.  It  worked  the  most  hideous  horrors  of  the 
dismal  time.  In  the  open  streets  of  the  Imperial 
City,  from  lamp  posts  and  trees,  dangled  the  quiv 
ering  bodies  of  these  murdered  victims,  strangled 
for  their  color,  for  whom  death,  without  shrift,  or 
mercy,  or  a  moment's  warning,  was  dealt  out  by 
their  infuriated,  persecuting  foes.  To  the  torment 
of  strangulation  was  added  the  torture  of  fire,  plied 
with  all  the  savagery  of  the  wildest  tribes  of  red- 
men.  With  a  like  frenzy,  set  on  fire  of  hell,  the 
mob  stormed,  and  sacked,  and  fired,  on  the  first  day 
of  the  outbreak,  a  noble  hospitium  on  the  Via 
Quinta,  built  to  shelter  and  train  orphan  children  of 
the  same  dusky  race.  Seven  hundred  of  these  help 
less  creatures  had  been  gathered  and  were  cared  for 
within  its  walls,  by  the  good  genius  Miserecordia 
and  her  noble,  tender  band  of  sisters.  With  fiend 
ish  violence,  in  the  broad  day,  the  work  of  destruc 
tion  was  begun  and  finished  by  the  brutal  band 
which,  amidst  the  screams  of  the  terror-stricken, 
fleeing  women  and  children,  pitched  its  infernal 
yells  at  a  higher  key,  and  held  frantic  revel  in  the 
blazing  ruin  which  it  wrought. 

A  great  fear  fell  on  the  Imperial  City,  and  then  a 
great  indignation  and  wrath  blazed  in  the  breast  of 
15 


226  DO  ME  STIC  US. 

every  true  citizen.  The  city  itself  was  powerless. 
Its  own  civil  force  had  rallied  to  its  rescue,  with  a 
heroism  worthy  of  all  praise.  Their  foremost  officer 
had  braved  the  dangers  of  the  mob  and  been  beaten 
off,  barely  escaping  with  his  life ;  his  chief  assistant, 
his  faithful  aids,  and  his  unflinching  rank  and  file,  had 
stood  at  every  post  of  duty,  undismayed,  but  power 
less,  in  the  presence  of  such  an  uprising.  The  great 
city  must  bear  upon  its  brow  the  brand  of  insurrec 
tion,  and  be  put  under  martial  law,  and  trained  troops 
be  summoned,  with  hottest  haste,  to  recapture  it 
from  the  hands  of  its  own  lawless  hordes. 

The  many-headed  mob,  having  tasted  the  mad 
dening  draught  of  unrestrained  license,  were  now 
not  only  gibbeting  the  dark-skinned  objects  of  their 
fury,  and  burning  and  pillaging  public  buildings,  but 
were  bent  on  firing  the  dwellings  of  some  obnoxious 
citizens,  were  marking  others  fen-  destruction,  and 
were  turning  from  indiscriminate  violence  to  organ 
ized  plunder. 

For  three  successive  days  the  fearful  struggle 
went  on.  By  degrees,  the  military  forces  were 
concentrated  against  the  insurgents  in  sufficient 
numbers  to  check  them  at  every  point,  and  drive 
them  back,  but  only  after  sharp  contests  and  hand- 
to-hand  fighting  in  the  streets.  The  rioters  poured 
their  ceaseless  fire  and  hurled  their  volleys  of  stones 
from  doors,  windows  and  house-tops,  finding,  when 
repulsed,  new  rallying  points  and  fresh  opportunities 
of  plunder,  and  inventing  new  methods  of  terror  and 
attack,  until  the  steady,  well-drilled  cohorts,  with 


THE  IMPERIAL  CITY'S  SHAME.  22/ 

their  unflinching  nerve  and  resistless  will,  over 
whelmed  them  at  all  points,  with  such  slaughter 
that  they  were  scattered  and  put  to  flight,  and  at 
last,  from  sheer  exhaustion,  relaxed  their  bloody  and 
brutal  clutch  upon  the  civic  life. 

The  revolt  was  not,  let  it  be  always  remembered, 
at  any  moment,  or  in  any  sense,  an  uprising  of  the 
people,  but  only  a  fermentation  of  the  dregs  of  the 
populace.  The  patient  loyalty  of  the  good  citi 
zens,  of  every  class,  would  have  sufficed  to  bear  the 
strain  of  the  conscription.  It  was  in  the  cruel  spite 
and  hatred  toward  the  proscribed  race;  the  ever- 
present  jealousy  and  grudge  which  the  criminal  and 
degraded  portion  of  the  population  of  a  great  me 
tropolis  holds  in  reserve  against  its  well  to  do  and 
wealthier  inhabitants ;  and  in  the  secret  sympathy  for 
the  cause  which  was  striving  to  overturn  the  govern 
ment,  that  the  plotters  who  worked  in  secret,  and  the 
ruffians  who  filled  the  streets  with  riot,  found  the  fuel 
for  the  flames  they  kindled. 


CHAPTER  XXI. 

DANGERS    AND    DELIVERANCES. 

IT  was  on  the  last  day  of  this  wild  carnival  of 
insurrection  that  a  vessel  of  war,  bearing  the 
starry  flag  of  the  Sisterhood,  whose  voyage  had 
been  northward,  along  the  eastern  shores  and  capes 
of  Magna  Patria,  crossed  the  bar,  sailed  up  the  broad 
bay,  and  came  to  a  safe  mooring  at  a  wharf  at  the 
lower  end  of  the  Imperial  City,  on  its  western  side. 
The  first  person  who  stepped  ashore  was  Juventus. 
He  had  been  sent,  at  short  notice,  by  his  command 
ing  officer,  on  a  mission  of  secret  military  service,  to 
the  Imperial  City,  where  he  was  to  report  accord 
ing  to  his  instructions  and  await  orders  from  the 
seat  of  government.  He  was  in  the  undress  uni 
form  of  his  command  and  rank,  and  his  tall  form, 
bronzed  face,  and  soldierly  air,  made  him  a  conspicu 
ous  figure,  as  he  crossed  the  street  which  skirted 
the  river,  and  went,  with  rapid  steps,  toward  the 
main,  broad  avenue  of  the  City. 

His  route  lay  through  a  narrow  street,  crossing  a 
net  work  of  crowded  tenements,  filled  with  such 
denizens  as  swarm  in  the  degradation  and  filth  which 
make  the  plague-spots  of  a  metropolis.  Scarcely  had 
he  set  foot  in  this  pestilent  precinct  before  he  became 
228 


DANGERS  AND  DEI  ITERANCES. 


229 


conscious  of  a  sudden  sound  of  jeers,  and  hootings, 
and  derisive  shouts ;  his  way  was  blocked  by  a  throng 
of  half-clad,  begrimed  imps  and  blear-eyed  hags,  in 
rags  and  tatters,  while  on  the  edge  of  the  motley 
mass,  attracted  by  its  wild  outcries,  rough  men 
came  pushing  their  way  toward  him  with  oaths 
and  threats,  and  from  the  whole  crowd,  in  one  shrill, 
united  shriek,  went  up  a  cry  for  his  blood. 

Juventus  was  in  the  hands  of  the  mob ;  its  spirit 
now  diffused,  as  by  a  secret  electric  current,  through 
all  the  vilest  elements  of  the  population,  could 
improvise  at  any  moment,  and  at  any  point  where 
its  material  existed,  a  force  for  its  foul  and  fiendish 
work.  The  sight  of  the  blue  uniform  of  a  soldier 
of  the  Sisterhood  was  a  sure  and  swift  incentive  for 
its  cruel  and  bloody  outburst. 

In  his  ignorance  of  the  cause  of  this  strange,  hos 
tile  demonstration,  Juventus  was  dazed  and  stupe 
fied.  Had  he  landed  in  the  great,  loyal  metropolis 
of  his  country,  or  was  he,  by  some  strange  mis 
chance,  thrown  into  the  streets  of  one  of  the  capitals 
of  the  revolting  sisters  ?  He  could  hardly  tell,  but 
the  present  danger  must  be  met,  and  he  braced 
himself  against  the  wall  of  the  building  by  the  side 
of  which  he  was  passing  when  so  unexpectedly 
stopped,  and  tried  to  silence  the  shouts  which  were 
deafening  him,  by  demanding  in  a  loud  voice  why  he 
was  interfered  with  ?  He  called  upon  the  crowd  to 
give  way  and  let  him  pass,  using,  at  the  same  time, 
all  his  strength  to  make  a  pathway  for  himself.  A 
storm  of  jeers  was  all  the  answer  he  evoked ;  foul 


230  DOMESTICUS. 

words  and  filthy  missiles  flew  thick  and  fast ;  while 
the  men  who  now  confronted  him,  with  savage  jeers, 
he  saw  were  fully  able  to  overpower  him.  His  life 
was  in  their  hands,  but  he  would  sell  it  dearly. 

He  was  just  gathering  his  strength  for  a  desperate 
struggle  when  his  watch  was  demanded,  and  in  the 
same  breath,  his  money.  From  the  furtive  glances 
and  lowered  tones  of  the  foremost  ruffians,  he 
gathered,  in  an  instant,  the  idea  that  they  intended 
to  possess  themselves  of  the  booty  to  be  gained  by 
plundering  him  of  his  valuables,  for  their  own  bene 
fit,  before  delivering  him  over  to  the  mercies  of  the 
mob.  His  watch  he  would  never  give  up — it  was 
Prima's  gift — but,  quick  as  thought,  he  drew,  from 
the  inner  breast  pocket  of  his  coat,  a  roll  of  bills 
amounting  to  several  hundred  sestertia,  and  separa 
ting  them,  as  he  pulled  them  forth,  he  flung  them 
broadcast,  into  the  crowd.  In  an  instant,  and  with 
a  wilder  yell  than  he  had  yet  heard,  the  whole  devil 
ish  pack  turned  upon  itself,  to  catch  and  seize  the 
descending  shower,  and  to  scramble  and  fight  for 
the  treasure  so  suddenly  dispensed.  The  crowd 
gave  way  from  the  wall  of  the  building  against  which 
he  stood ;  he  slipped  past,  and  without  the  slightest 
sense  of  shame,  took  to  his  heels,  with  such  fleetness 
of  foot  that  before  the  mad  struggle  for  the  money 
was  over,  he  was  beyond  reach,  and  had  gained  the 
thoroughfare  he  sought. 

Here  he  found,  to  his  surprise,  that  no  public 
conveyances  were  in  sight.  The  usually  thronged 
street  was  almost  deserted.  He  hailed  the  only 


D  \NCEKS  AND  DELIVERANCES.  231 

vehicle  to  be  seen,  driven  by  a  drayman,  beside 
whom  he  seated  himself,  and  asked  an  explana 
tion  of  the  mystery  of  iniquity  he  had  so  strangely 
encountered.  It  was  quickly  gi\vn,  and  Juvcntus, 
as  quickly,  secured  a  promise  from  his  companion 
to  take  him,  forthwith,  to  the  headquarters  of  the 
military  forces  to  which  the  City,  being  under  mar 
tial  law,  was  now  subject. 

"  I  must  have  a  hand  in  this  fight,"  said  Juventus, 
with  a  voice  and  air  of  prowess  which  made  the 
drayman  think  he  carried  Caesar. 

The  appearance  of  an  officer,  fresh  from  the  battle 
fields  where  the  strife  for  the  Sisterhood  was  raging, 
with  his  ready  offer  of  instant  service,  was  most 
opportune,  for  the  need  of  skilled  commanders  was 
very  great.  Juventus  lost  no  time  in  assuming  the 
duties  assigned  him,  and  within  two  hours  from  the 
time  of  his  deliverance  from  the  mob,  he  was  at  the 
head  of  a  corps  of  sharp-shooters,  opening  upon  a 
horde  of  the  rioters  a  destructive  fire,  before  which 
they  fled  in  terror  and  despair. 

The  conflict  was  almost  ended  ;  but  after  night-fall, 
tidings  came  that  the  insurgents  had  rallied,  in 
great  numbers,  as  if  for  a  final  onslaught,  and  were 
pillaging  and  plundering,  in  a  quarter  of  the  City 
where  the  force  of  soldiery  detailed  to  disperse  them 
had  proved  too  weak,  and  had  been  repulsed  with 
serious  loss,  leaving  some  of  their  number  dead  in 
the  streets.  The  crisis  was  imminent.  This  new 
stronghold  of  the  rioters  was  on  two  of  the  avenues, 
on  the  eastern  side,  running  parallel  to  each  other, 


232  D  OMES  TIC  US. 

and  in  the  streets  crossing  them  at  right  angles; 
both  avenues  and  streets  being  designated  by  num 
bers,  according  to  the  method  of  the  Imperial  City 
in  its  northernmost  districts,  the  avenues  held  by  the 
rioters  being  the  Via  Prima  and  the  Via  Secunda, 
and  the  streets,  those  ranging  from  twenty-third  to 
twenty-ninth,  in  numerical  order. 

Juventus  and  his  command  were  ordered  to  the 
scene  of  this  fresh  victory  of  the  mob  and  reaching 
it  by  a  quick  march,  found  the  hostile  forces  in 
full  possession  of  many  of  the  houses  along  the 
Via  Secunda,  and  in  the  adjacent  streets,  posted  at 
the  windows,  and  on  the  roofs,  whence  their  aim 
could  be  sure  and  deadly,  and  their  destructive  mis 
siles  hurled  with  murderous  effect. 

Juventus  gave  orders  to  his  men,  first  to  sweep 
the  streets  with  their  fire,  and  then  to  turn  it  upon 
the  windows  and  house-tops,  moving  forward  steadily 
along  the  line  held  by  the  mob.  A  terrible  battle 
ensued.  The  streets  were  cleared  and  the  rioters 
turned  into  a  howling,  fleeing  mass,  in  which  the 
dead  and  the  wounded  were  trampled  upon  by  the 
terror-stricken  fugitives;  while  the  shots  fired  from 
the  close  ranks  of  the  soldiery,  at  the  houses,  win 
dows,  and  roofs,  took  fatal  effect. 

The  insurgents,  driven  from  the  houses,  took  to 
the  streets,  and  the  fighting  went  on,  at  close  quar 
ters,  ending  with  the  flight  of  the  now  thoroughly 
panic-stricken  and  beaten  mob.  Juventus  ordered  a 
close  pursuit  in  the  main  avenue,  and  a  clearing  of 
the  side  streets,  to  prevent  the  rallying  of  the  broken 


DANGERS  AND  DEI. ITERANCES. 


233 


forces  of  the  enemy.  He  turned  a  detachment  of 
his  men  into  one  of  the  streets,  at  the  corner  of 
which,  from  a  tall  house,  some  of  the  sharpest  firing 
had  come.  As  he  halted  to  let  his  men  go  by,  and 
to  see  that  nothing  endangered  the  rear  of  the 
column,  a  blow  from  behind,  whether  dealt  close  at 
hand,  or  by  a  stone  hurled  from  above,  he  never 
knew,  struck  him  to  the  ground.  He  sprang  to  his 
feet,  with  a  dizzy  and  confused  brain  ;  in  the  dark 
ness  of  the  night,  left  for  the  moment  without  the 
power  of  speech, — hardly  with  the  power  of  thought, 
— he  could  give  no  word  of  command,  or  call  for 
aid  ;  his  men,  unwitting  of  his  disaster,  pushed  on  in 
their  pursuit  while  he  felt  himself  caught  by  strong 
hands,  and  knew,  upon  regaining  full  consciousness, 
that  he  was  helpless,  and  a  prisoner. 

Although  powerless  to  resist,  the  first  feeling  of 
Juventus,  on  coming  to  a  clear  comprehension  of 
his  position,  was  that  of  surprise  that  he  had  not 
been  killed  outright,  but  as  the  experience  of  the 
morning  had  taught  him  that  the  greed  of  gain  was, 
with  many  of  the  brutal  band  of  rioters,  a  stronger 
motive  than  the  thirst  for  revenge,  he  thought  it 
possible  he  was  to  be  held  for  ransom.  Not  a  word 
was  spoken  as  he  was  led  by  his  captors  through  a 
door-way  level  with  the  street,  into  the  long  narrow 
hall  of  the  high  building,  already  mentioned,  from 
the  upper  windows  of  which  he  had  marked  that  a 
murderous  and  persistent  fire  had  been  kept  up, 
until  silenced  by  the  fatal,  answering  shots  from  his 
own  ranks. 


234 


DO  ME  STIC  US. 


There  was  a  dim  light  in  the  passage,  and  as  he 
was  hurried  past  the  narrow  stair-way,  he  caught 
sight  of  the  flashing  eyes  of  a  woman  who  stood 
on  the  landing  above,  looking  down  upon  him,  her 
face  enveloped  in  a  black  wrap,  and  her  form  quiv 
ering  from  head  to  foot.  Beyond  the  stair-way,  and 
underneath  it,  were  steps  leading  to  the  cellar  of  the 
house,  and  after  descending  these  he  was  conducted 
to  the  rear  vault,  into  which  he  was  thrust,  and  left 
in  utter  darkness. 

His  brain  was  not  yet  entirely  clear,  and  sharp 
pains  shot  through  it.  He  threw  off  his  cap,  and 
pressed  his  hands  against  his  head,  to  make  sure 
there  was  no  fracture  or  contusion,  and  then  he 
groped  about  his  prison,  to  discover  its  limits  and 
possible  openings.  It  was  simply  a  vault  for  coal, 
a  heap  of  which  he  soon  encountered.  It  had,  in 
the  rear,  an  open  shaft,  bricked  on  all  sides  and  cov 
ered  at  the  top  with  an  iron  grating.  The  sole 
egress  from  the  vault  was  the  door  by  which  he 
had  entered,  now  locked  on  the  outside. 

How  long  a  time  passed  after  he  finished  this 
exploration  and  while  he  sat  in  the  darkness,  or 
what  were  the  thoughts  which  filled  and  crowded 
his  mind,  in  its  bewilderment  and  uncertainty,  he 
could  never  tell.  In  the  retrospect  it  seemed  a  dis 
mal  blank,  but  he  never  forgot  his  sudden  recall  to 
the  keenest  exercise  of  his  senses  when  he  caught 
the  sound  of  footsteps,  and  of  what  seemed  a  slow 
tramp  overhead,  and  presently,  of  digging  in  the 
earth,  just  beyond  the  open  grating.  It  crossed  his 


DANGERS  AND  DELIVERANCES.  235 

mind  that  perhaps  his  own  grave  was  in  preparation, 
and  he  felt,  more  than  ever,  how  futile  resistance 
would  be.  Quickened  by  this  new  sense  of  danger, 
he  listened  more  eagerly,  and  perceived  that  the 
work  of  digging  went  on  in  dead  silence,  not  a 
word  being  uttered,  nor  a  sound  made,  save  by 
the  dull,  monotonous  spade-thrusts.  Just  at  this 
moment,  he  was  conscious  of  a  faint,  rustling  noise, 
and  the  turning  of  a  key  ;  then  he  heard  his  own 
name  breathed  in  a  whisper  so  soft  as  to  convey  a 
command  of  silence  as  well  as  a  summons. 

In  the  darkness,  he  could  not  discern  the  speaker, 
but  he  sprang  forward  toward  the  door;  the  in 
stinct  of  self-preservation  restraining  him  from  any 
spoken  word.  Extending  his  hand,  he  felt  it 
grasped  by  another  hand,  quivering  and  icy  cold. 
Yielding  to  its  guidance,  he  was  led  to  the  front  of 
the  underground  passage,  and  there  his  unseen 
deliverer  spoke. 

"Juventus,  I  am  Stella.  I  saw  you  when  they 
brought  you  in.  I  have  been  planning — ever  since — 
to  save  you.  I  think  they  mean  to  kill  you.  One  of 
them  wants  money  so  much,  he  may  keep  them  from 
it.  But  do  as  I  say.  Here  are  overalls,  a  workman's 
blouse,  and  an  old  hat.  Put  them  on  over  your 
uniform.  Here  is  a  spade.  Take  it  and  follow  me. 
They  are  digging  graves,  behind  the  house,  for  two 
who  were  shot.  They  are  afraid  the  place  will  be 
searched  in  the  morning,  and  they  must  bury  them 
now.  They  needed  another  man  to  help  in  the 
digging,  and  I  said  I  would  fetch  him  from  close 


236  DOME  STIC  US. 

by.  You  must  dig  ;  they  will  not  dare  say  a  word. 
They  will  want  you  to  go  when  the  digging  is  done, 
because  they  will  let  no  one  into  the  secret  of  their 
having  imprisoned  you  here.  I  will  pay  you  when 
you  quit  the  work,  and  you  will  walk  out  free." 

"  But,  Stella,"  said  Juventus,  who  was  already 
equipped  in  his  disguise,  "  why  cannot  I  walk  out 
now  ?  " 

"  Go,"  said  she,  in  a  quivering  whisper,  "  but  then 
they  will  kill  me  for  your  escape." 

"  Pardon  me,  my  brave  Stella,"  said  Juventus,  "  I 
am  only  half  myself.  I  will  do  what  you  say.  Nay, 
I  will  not — I  will  go  back  to  the  vault — unless  I 
know  that  you  will  be  safe.  May  they  not,  in  any 
case,  suspect  you  of  aiding  my  flight  ?  " 

"  No,  no,"  said  Stella.  "  I  had  a  key  to  the  door, 
they  did  not  know  of.  I  have  left  it  inside,  on 
the  floor.  They  will  think  you  found  it ;  I  have  un 
fastened  the  grating,  here  in  front,  from  below. 
That  will  account  for  your  getting  out." 

"  But  they  will  want  you  to  show  the  man  whom 
you  got  to  help  in  the  digging." 

"  I  have  a  good  friend  who  will  swear  he  did  it,  if 
need  be.  No,  they  will  never  suspect  me.  Juventus," 
and  her  whisper  was  still  more  quivering,  "  one  of 
the  men  who  was  shot  was  my  husband ;  he  is  dead  ; 
— he  was  good  to  me — when  he  was  himself — I  was 
as  fierce  for  revenge  as  any  of  them — they  think  I 
am  now — but  why  should  you  be  killed  or  harmed  ? 
you  saved  my  life — I  am  only  paying  a  debt;  but 
quick — come  now." 


DANGERS  AND  DELIVERANCES. 


237 


Taking  him  again  by  the  hand  and  ascending 
the  stairs,  she  led  him,  in  the  dark, to  the  rear  door; 
a  single  descending  step  brought  them  into  the  little 
space  of  ground  behind  the  house,  enclosed  by  high 
board  fences,  where  two  men  were  digging,  side  by 
side.  The  coming  of  Juventus  with  his  spade  was 
evidently  expected,  and  his  falling  into  the  hard 
work,  with  vigor,  was  accepted  in  silence. 

The  night  was  dark  and  rain  was  falling,  so  that 
he  could  not  see  the  faces  of  his  co-workers,  but  he 
dug  with  all  his  might,  thankful  that  in  case  of  any 
miscarriage  of  Stella's  plan,  he  had  a  new  weapon  in 
his  hand, — his  sword  and  pistols  having  been  taken 
from  him  at  his  capture.  At  the  moment,  he  was 
more  anxious  for  Stella  than  for  himself,  knowing 
that  her  safety  depended  on  the  successful  issue  of 
her  stratagem.  Accordingly,  he  put  into  his  task 
all  of  the  dogged  persistence  of  the  class  of  which 
he  was,  for  the  time  being,  an  ally,  and  the  two 
graves  were  soon  dug  to  their  proper  depth.  He 
paused,  resting  on  his  spade,  and  awaited  the  next 
movement  with  an  intense  apprehension  which  could 
not  have  been  concealed  but  for  the  darkness  of  the 
night. 

To  his  inexpressible  relief,  after  a  whispered  word 
from  one  of  his  fellow-diggers  to  Stella,  who  mean 
while  handed  to  the  speaker  a  heavy  key,  she  thrust 
into  his  hand  a  bit  of  paper,  representing  a  fraction 
of  a  sestertium,  and  the  ruffian  with  the  key 
motioned  Juventus  to  follow.  He  led  the  way,  in 
silence,  through  the  long  hall,  until  they  reached 


238 


DOMESTIC  US. 


the  street  door,  which  he  unlocked  and  opened,  just 
wide  enough  to  permit  the  egress  of  Juventus,  who 
walked  forth  into  the  dark  and  silent  street,  a  free 
man. 

Keeping  fast  hold  of  his  trusty  spade,  he  went, 
with  rapid  strides,  toward  the  main  thoroughfares, 
exciting  no  observation,  and  encountering  few  per 
sons,  as  the  night  was  well  advanced,  and  the  citizens 
did  not  care  to  be  abroad  in  these  troublous  times. 

He  was  seized  with  an  irresistible  longing  to  see 
Prima.  On  the  morrow  he  must  resume  the  duty 
of  his  mission,  so  strangely  interrupted,  and,  per 
haps,  be  ordered  to  a  distance.  The  events  which 
had  crowded  themselves  into  this  single  day,  be 
tween  sunrise  and  midnight,  were  so  strange  ;  his 
double  deliverance  from  a  cruel  death,  or  from  a 
great  danger,  seemed  so  signal  a  blessing  ;  the  good 
part  he  had  been  able  to  take  in  the  suppression  of 
the  insurrection  was  such  a  wonderful  opportunity 
of  service,  that  he  was  hardly  able  to  believe  these 
things  were  all  embraced  within  the  compass  of  a 
few  hours.  He  must  tell  the  story,  at  once,  to  her 
for  whom  his  life  had  been  so  signally  spared,  and 
in  the  intense  excitement  of  his  feelings,  was  car 
ried  so  far  beyond  his  real  strength  that  it  seemed 
to  him  an  easy  thing  to  overcome  the  distance 
which  separated  him  from  the  dwelling  of  the 
Prince. 

In  fact,  it  was  a  long  and  weary  way  to  traverse, 
at  so  late  an  hour,  for  one  in  the  physical  condition 
in  which  the  day's  vicissitudes  had  left  Juventus 


DANGERS  AND  DELll'ERAXCES.  239 

But  finding  that  in  the  upper  part  of  the  city,  on  its 
western  side,  removed  from  the  scene  of  the  riots, 
the  public  vehicles  were  running,  and  that  the  last 
northward  trip  for  the  night  was  about  to  be  made, 
lie  was  enabled,  by  the  use  of  the  bit  of  currency 
which  Stella  had  placed  in  his  hand,  to  be  conveyed 
to  a  point  near  the  round  tower  described  to  him 
by  Prima,  and  thence  he  came,  without  difficulty, 
to  the  willow  trees  and  the  gate  they  overshadowed. 

The  house  faced  toward  the  West  and  North  ;  as 
Juventus  entered  the  gate,  he  saw  that  a  light  was 
burning  in  a  window  of  its  front,  left  open  for  the 
chance  breezes  of  the  summer  night.  As  he  paused 
on  the  gravel-path,  the  wind,  which  had  risen  in  the 
night  and  changed  from  its  rainy  quarter,  blew  off 
the  lingering  clouds,  and  far  up,  in  the  dim  heavens, 
he  caught  the  distant  flicker  of  the  North  Star.  At 
this  moment,  at  the  open  casement,  he  saw  with 
throbbing  heart,  a  white-robed  figure,  and  there  fell 
upon  his  ear  the  words,  breathed  toward  the  far- 
off  orb, — 

"  Good-night,  Juventus." 

"  Good-night,  Prima,"  was  his  quick  response. 

He  saw  her  start ;  he  heard  her  sudden  cry  of 
wonder;  and  fearing  she  might  be  overcome  by  the 
startling  sound,  called  with  louder  voice,  to  declare 
his  presence,  and  to  reassure  her  perturbed  spirit. 

Then  he  said,  "  If  it  is  too  late,  do  not  let  any 
one  be  disturbed;  I  could  not  go  without  greeting 
you,  even  if  the  greeting  be  a  farewell." 

"  No  one  will  be  disturbed,"  said  Prima,  "  and  no 


DOMESTICUS. 

one  would  forgive  you  had  you  not  come.  Mamma 
is  still  astir.  In  these  fearful  times  we  have  not 
been  able  to  sleep;  we  will  all  come  down  and 
meet  you  at  the  door;  wait  only  a  few  moments." 

The  long  day's  work  was  done.  Its  terrible  suc 
cessive  strains  had  been  met,  and  they  were  over 
past.  The  quiet  home  of  his  betrothed  had  been 
gained  in  safety ;  her  dear  voice  had  welcomed  him  ; 
no  further  need  of  strength,  of  will,  of  courage,  of 
excitement,  to  bear  him  up  for  any  deed  of  daring 
or  duty.  The  reaction  came  with  sudden  force,  and 
as  the  Prince  and  the  Princess  with  Prima,  all 
aroused  and  eager  to  receive  the  unexpected  visitor, 
threw  open  their  door  for  his  entrance,  he  could 
only  take  one  tottering  step  forward,  and  then  fell 
senseless  at  their  feet. 


CHAPTER  XXII. 

THE  VIA  SEXTA. 

AT  last,  after  four  years  of  fighting,  the  strife  was 
ended.  The  last  shot  had  been  fired  ;  the  final 
surrender  made;  and  the  Sisterhood  was  saved. 
Following  swiftly  upon  the  suppression  of  the  riots 
in  the  Imperial  City,  came  the  issue  of  the  impend 
ing  battle  upon  which,  more  than  upon  any  pre 
vious  conflict,  hung  the  issues  of  the  war.  It  had 
resulted,  not  in  the  destruction  of  the  invading 
army,  or  its  capture,  but  in  checking  its  advance 
and  forcing  its  withdrawal  to  the  nether  side  of  the 
line,  there  to  re-intrench  itself  for  new  resistance; 
while,  over  the  wide  theatre  of  the  strife,  renewed 
hostilities  and  campaigns  on  a  more  extended  scale 
gave  still  vaster  proportions  than  ever  before  to  the 
gigantic  struggle. 

Months  earlier,  with  much  hesitation  and  after 
many  sad  reverses,  the  real  issue  had  been  reached 
and  the  blow  struck  whereby  the  knot,  which  states 
manship  could  not  untie,  and  which  contention  had 
only  tightened,  was  severed  by  the  sword.  As  a  final 
measure  of  war,  and  after  a  hundred  clays  of  warning, 
the  word  had  g<>iv,-  forth  which,  with  the  dawn  of  the 
new  year,  proclaimed  the  enfranchisement  of  a  race. 
1 6  241 


242  DO  ME  STIC  US. 

At  last,  the  leaders,  long  waited  for  and  trained 
by  the  lessons  of  the  defeats  which  those  who  went 
before  them  had  suffered,  as  well  as  by  the  victories 
they  themselves  had  won,  came  to  the  front,  to  finish 
the  bloody  work.  Then,  under  the  supreme  com 
mand  of  one  patient,  unflinching,  steady  will,  the 
dread  issue  was  forced  to  its  final  trial,  and  the  day 
dawned  when  the  old  flag  floated  once  more  over  all 
the  rescued  realm. 

The  youth  and  vigor  of  Juventus  had  saved  him 
from  more  than  a  temporary  shock  to  his  nervous 
system,  as  the  result  of  his  day  spent  among  the 
infuriated  rioters  of  the  Imperial  City.  The  care  of 
the  Princess  and  Prima  restored  him  to  health  even 
more  quickly  than  suited  them,  for  his  impatience 
to  resume  his  distant  command  outstripped  their 
loving  anxieties  for  his  complete  recovery,  and  took 
him  from  them,  before  they  were  quite  ready  to 
trust  him  to  himself.  His  services  on  the  eventful 
day  were  duly  recognized  and  honorably  men 
tioned,  and  by  the  timely  intervention  of  the  Prince, 
prompted  by  the  papers  he  found  in  the  possession 
of  Juventus,  the  special  service  on  which  he  came 
to  the  Imperial  City  suffered  no  harm.  The  secret 
of  his  strange  deliverance  he  confided  only  to 
Prima,  fearing  that  if  entrusted  to  other  ears  some 
possible  danger  might  come  to  his  deliverer.  All 
that  was  generally  known  was  that  he  had  been  left 
wounded  in  the  street,  and  had,  afterwards,  made 
his  way  to  the  house  of  the  Prince. 


THE   VIA  SEXT.1.  243 

The  war  ended,  the  great  contending  armies  were 
disbanded.  In  the  strange  and  almost  instantaneous 
transformation  from  serried  hostile  ranks  to  peace 
ful  tillers  of  the  soil,  or  toilers  in  all  the  countless 
arts,  and  industries,  and  professions  in  which,  the 
broad  land  over,  the  labor  of  her  sons  was  engaged, 
the  world  saw  a  new  sight.  Peace,  as  with  an 
enchanter's  touch,  dissolved  the  whole  hideous  array 
and  enginery  of  wai . 

So  have  we  seen,  from  some  high  peak,  the 
black,  storm-charged  billows  of  cloud,  heaving  and 
surging  with  seemingly  inexhaustible  stores  of 
pent-up  wrath,  on  a  sudden  melt  away  at  the  sove 
reign  glance  and  beam  of  the  outbursting  sun. 

Juventus  was  glad  to  return  unharmed  and  with 
a  brilliant  record  to  his  accustomed  work  as  a 
civilian.  He  found,  without  difficulty,  a  new  open 
ing  in  the  activities  which  immediately  received  a 
fresh  impulse  at  the  restoration  of  peace,  and  was 
soon  regularly  employed,  as  the  head  of  a  depart 
ment,  in  an  important  industrial  enterprise. 

He  pleaded  with  Prima  for  a  speedy  marriage. 
He  thought  he  had  reason  on  his  side  when  he 
urged  that  hostilities  being  ended,  engagements 
should  cease,  and  union  should  be  the  paramount 
idea.  He  had  saved,  out  of  his  pay,  enough  to  pro 
vide  for  the  fitting-up  of  the  modest  establishment 
which  he  proposed.  He  unfolded  his  plans  to  Prima 
with  the  courage  of  a  veteran  campaigner.  To  con 
dense  in  a  few  words  the  conversations  and  discus 
sions  of  several  evenings, — he  had  projected  an  alii- 


244  DO  ME  STIC  US. 

ance  with  a  comrade  who  had  served  with  him  in 
the  war,  and  who  owned  a  house  in  the  Via  Sexta, 
a  thoroughfare  which,  though  next  in  order  and 
parallel  to  the  Via  Quinta,  was  separated  from  it  by 
an  impassable  gulf,  in  respect  of  gentility  and  of 
permitted  residence,  under  the  rules  of  Societas. 

It  was  not,  however,  at  that  time,  as  to  any  part 
of  it,  under  a  special  ban  of  disrepute,  and  was 
largely  devoted  to  the  uses  of  small  traders,  and  as 
yet  unvisited  by  the  marvelous  methods  of  upper- 
level  locomotion,  to  which,  later  on,  it  was  appro 
priated.  The  house  was  occupied  on  the  ground 
floor  by  the  comrade,  the  front  portion  being  avail 
able  for  his  business  as  an  engraver  and  carver  in 
metals,  and  the  rear  for  the  living  apartments  of 
himself  and  wife.  Overhead,  was  a  suite  of  rooms 
of  which  Juventus  would  become  the  tenant,  and 
which  could  be  fitted-up  to  suit  the  needs  of  Prima 
and  himself. 

Prima  had  not  faced  the  cannon's  mouth  on  the 
battle-field,  but  she  had  the  quiet  courage  needful 
to  brave  the  galling  fusilade  to  which  she  knew  she 
would  be  subjected  if  she  took  up  the  line  of  march 
to  which  Juventus  invited.  To  marry  a  poor  man 
whose  fortune  was  all  to  be  made,  and  whose  daily 
earnings  must  suffice  for  their  whole  support,  to  live 
outside  of  the  limits  of  Societas,  to  exchange,  for 
the  friendly  greetings  of  its  votaries,  their  sneers 
and  shrugs,  and  ill-concealed — perhaps  openly 
expressed — disdain,  none  but  a  brave  girl  would 
dare.  And  such  an  one  was  Prima.  Juventus  dis- 


THE  VIA  SEXTA.  345 

closed  his  whole  scheme.  He  figured  out,  to  a 
sestertium,  the  yearly,  monthly,  daily  cost  of  the 
living,  and  brought  his  practical  mathematics  to 
bear  on  the  problem  of  making  both  ends  so  meet 
that  there  would  be  considerable  lapping  over. 

"  I  have  enough  on  hand,"  said  he,  "  to  make 
those  bare  rooms,  with  the  added  touch  of  your 
taste  and  skill,  as  attractive  as  if  they  were  in  a 
wing  of  the  bravest  palace  on  earth  ;  as  good  books 
can  be  put  on  pine  shelves  daintily  draped,  as  in 
the  grandest  library ;  as  good  cheer  can  be  found 
in  the  cosy  corner  where  our  board  is  to  be  spread, 
as  in  the  most  luxurious  banqueting-hall ;  there  can 
be  place  always  for  two,  beside  ourselves,  whether 
our  table  be  square  or  round,  and  if  we  cannot 
pour  libations  of  sparkling  Falernian  into  gemmed 
goblets,  we  can  provide  from  some  honest,  though 
rougher  vintage  for  the  guests  we  entertain.  A  man 
surely  has  a  right  to  take  some  risks  in  the 
line  which  I  have  marked  out.  So  long  as  I  can 
earn  enough,  and  more  than  enough,  for  our  sup 
port,  in  this  frugal  way,  why  should  we  not  begin  at 
once  the  journey  of  our  married  life?" 

"  Mamma  thinks,"  said  Prima, "  and  often  says,  that 
girls  who  have  been  brought  up  in  luxury  lose  a 
great  deal  by  never  having  the  opportunity  of 
beginning  at  the  beginning,  as  so  many  of  the  very 
best  people  did  who  have  liberal  homes  in  their  later 
days,  to  which  they  grew  up  gradually.  For  children 
to  commence  where  their  parents  leave  off,  seems 
to  her  to  be  burning  the  candle  at  the  wrong  end. 


246 


DOMESTICUS. 


There  is  nothing  more  to  be  had  if  you  have  every 
thing  at  once.  And  then  it  seems  to  happen,  so 
often,  that  they  who  commence  at  the  very  top  have 
to  come  down  to  the  very  bottom,  or  unpleasantly 
near  it,  without  the  preparation  of  a  previous  expe 
rience.  There  must  be  a  great  deal  of  pleasure  in 
making  one's  way  from  small  beginnings.  For  my 
own  part  I  don't  want  to  start  as  a  dowager." 

"  I  have  no  fear,"  said  Juventus,  "  that  we  shall 
not  move  as  rapidly  as  may  be  desirable  toward 
greater  comfort  than  we  may  find  at  first ;  but  to 
keep  within  the  bounds  which  are  indispensable  now, 
will  require  some  sacrifice,  and  if  what  I  am  propos 
ing  is  to  be  a  trial,  I  will  not  ask  you  to  assent.  I 
will  wait  as  long  as  you  require;  not  as  patiently, 
perhaps,  as  you  could  wish." 

"  Possibly,"  said  Prima,  "  we  could  do  a  little 
missionary  work,  by  way  of  setting  an  example  to 
some  of  these  other  young  people,  who  run  to  the 
very  edge  of  the  sea  of  matrimony,  and  then  rush 
back,  because  they  are  afraid  to  venture  into  the 
waves  without  having  the  life-preserver  of  a  fortune 
tied  about  them.  Of  course,"  she  said,  demurely, 
"  I  must  see  this  thing  in  the  light  of  a  positive 
duty." 

"  You  will  do  what  I  ask  ?  I  am  sure  you  will !  " 
said  Juventus,  with  a  whole  sunrise  of  hope  in  his 
eyes. 

"  I  will,"  said  Prima  ;  and  it  was  a  bargain,  not 
signed,  to  be  sure,  but  sealed  in  a  sufficiently  bind 
ing  way,  according  to  the  immemorial  usage  of 


THE  VIA  SEXTA. 


247 


Magna  Patria  and  other  realms,  and  to  the  satisfac 
tion  of  both  the  contracting  parties. 

"  And  what  now,  Prima  ?  "  asked  Gloriosa,  when 
they  met,  for  the  first  time,  after  the  event  I  have 
just  recorded. 

"  Juventus  and  I  are  to  be  married  next  month," 
said  Prima.  "  He  has  found  excellent  employment, 
and  has  taken  some  very  nice  rooms  in  the  Via 
Sexta." 

"  The  Via  Sexta  !  "  cried  Gloriosa,  throwing  up 
both  hands,  heavy  with  their  sparkling,  gold-encased 
diamonds  and  rubies,  in  a  way  that  expressed  unut 
terable  horror. 

"Yes,"  said  Prima;  "  you  could  hardly  expect  him 
to  take  a  palace  on  the  Via  Quinta,  considering  that 
he  only  earns,  just  now,  less  than  two  hundred 
sestertia  a  month." 

"And  you  are  going  to  be  married  on  that  ?  " 

"  Why  not  ?  It  is  enough  to  begin  on.  The  rooms 
are  lovely.  They  are  over  the  shop  of  an  engraver 
who  served  in  the  war  with  Juventus.  His  wife  is 
a  most  capable  little  woman,  and  she  will  supply  all 
we  want,  and  keep  our  one  servant,  besides." 

"  This  is  horrible,  absolutely  horrible!"  said  Glor 
iosa.  "  You  are  going  to  destroy  yourself.  Why  not 
wait  till  he  can  support  you  decently?" 

"  He  can  support  me  decently  now,"  said  Prima. 
"  He  is  in  love  with  me  and  I  am  in  love  with  him. 
He  earns  enough  to  keep  us  both,  in  a  simple  way. 
I  can  help  him  in  his  work.  I  am  ready  to  share  his 


248 


DOMESTICUS. 


fortunes,  and  I  cannot  see  why  we  should  wait  on 
the  whims  of  other  people  when  doing  as  we  prefer 
helps  us,  and  does  not  harm  them." 

"  It  is  madness,"  said  Gloriosa.  "  Think  of  what 
you  have  been  accustomed  to,  and  what  you  are  en 
joying,  even  now,  luxury, — or  comfort,  at  least,— 
and  the  height  of  respectability,  although,  just  at  this 
moment,  you  are  off  the  Avenue.  And  now  you 
want  to  sacrifice  yourself  for  a  man  who  has  nothing. 

"  He  has  everything,"  said  Prima,  "  except  money, 
and  that  will  come,  in  good  time.  I  am  making  no 
sacrifice  in  casting  in  my  lot  with  him.  I  am  not 
losing,  but  gaining.  What  did  I  read,  only  the 
other  day,  in  the  rude  French  of  an  old  chanson, 
earlier  than  Charlemagne — a  single  line  which  tells 
the  whole  truth,  for  all  time — 

"  lLi  cuers  d'un  horn  vaut  tout  Vor  d'un  pais! 
1  The  heart  of  a  man  is  worth  all  the  gold  of  a  land.' 
We  do  not  live  up  to  this  barbaric  standard.  With 
us,  the  love  of  gold  eats  at  the  very  core.  The 
heart  of  a  man  is  thrown  into  the  scale,  against 
money,  to  be  outweighed  and  held  for  naught. 
Come  what  may,  I  will  stand  by  my  choice  of  a 
man's  heart." 

"A  man's  heart,  without  a  man's  purse,  will  fur 
nish  nothing  but  sentiment  which  pays  no  bills," 
said  Gloriosa. 

"  I  know  that  well  enough,"  said  Prima,  "  and  I 
have  seen  girls  rush  foolishly  into  marriage,  to  find 
out  their  mistake  too  late,  if  not  too  soon.  But, 
Gloriosa,  is  it  not  true  that,  almost  always,  the  risk 


THE   VIA  SEXTA.  249 

they  took  was  of  the  man  and  not  of  his  means? 
That  is  my  risk  and  I  have  measured  it.  If Juven- 
tus  were  as  rich  as  the  richest,  I  would  still  want  to 
marry  not  his  money  but  himself;  and  how  if  a  man 
loses  his  money,  as  so  many  do  and  must  ?  Sup 
pose  Novus  \\\re  to  lose  his  fortune — " 

"  I  am  independent,"  said  Gloriosa,  quickly  and 
somewhat  sharply.  "  There  was  a  settlement  before 
we  were  married.  That  was  a  condition." 

Primawas  sorry  she  had  made  this  personal  allu 
sion  for  she  should  have  remembered  that  the  ties 
of  domesticity  were  said  to  sit  very  lightly  on 
Novus,  and  it  was  matter  of  general  knowledge  that 
Gloriosa's  recognized  independence  was  asserted  in  a 
variety  of  ways. 

"  Forgive  me,"  she  said,  "  I  had  no  right  to  ask 
questions.  All  I  meant  was  that  where  a  man 
has  nothing  to  give  but  his  heart,  and  his  best  en 
deavors,  a  girl  may  take  the  risk  of  marriage,  if  he 
is  able  to  earn  daily  bread  for  himself  and  any  one 
dependent  upon  him.  This  is  a  risk  people  are 
taking  every  day,  in  humbler  spheres  than  yours 
and  mine,  and  are  we  to  be  shut  out  from  a  kind  of 
happiness  they  are  permitted  to  enjoy  ?  " 

"  Yes,"  said  Gloriosa,  "  of  course  we  are,  unless  we 
are  willing  to  go  down  to  their  level.  We  are  just 
as  much  shut  out  from  what  you  call  their  happi 
ness  as  they  are  from  what,  I  suppose,  they  call  our 
extravagance.  Of  course,  you  can  degrade  your 
self,  if  you  choose,  but  you  must  take  the  conse 
quences." 


250 


DOMESTICUS. 


"  There  is  no  degradation,"  retorted  Prima;  "  I  can 
live  as  pure  and  noble  a  life  in  a  humble  place,  and 
among  poor  people,  as  I  could  in  the  Via  Quinta, 
and  I  am  glad  of  the  opportunity  of  doing  it. 
What  right  have  you  now,  or  had  I  once,  to  anything 
more  than  the  poorest  ?  Good  fortune  and  great 
fortunes  seem  to  me,  more  and  more,  purely  acci 
dental,  except  when  they  come  from  one's  own 
creative  efforts.  I  would  rather  have  a  single  ses- 
tertium  in  my  hand  that  I  had  earned,  or  that  some 
one  I  loved  had  earned  for  love  of  me,  than  a  hun 
dred  that  I  might  get  by  gift  or  inheritance." 

"  What  nonsense,  Prima !  Do  you  mean  you  would 
rather  enlist  under  Domesticus,  and  go  out  to  ser 
vice,  than  live  at  home  as  you  do,  or  as  you  have 
done  ?  " 

"  No.  Although  I  would  even  do  that,  if  I  could 
do  nothing  else  and  had  to  gain  my  own  living, 
before  I  would  lie  down  and  die  of  inaction.  There 
is  not  the  wide  difference  in  service,  or  work,  which 
you  imagine.  What  is  the  real  difference  between 
putting  food  into  a  child's  mouth  to  nourish  his 
body,  as  any  nurse  may  do  when  she  puts  a  bib 
under  his  chin  and  a  spoon  in  his  fingers,  and  put 
ting  high  thoughts  into  his  mind,  as  the  great  pre 
late  did  when  he  chronicled  the  wanderings  of 
Ulysses  for  the  heir  of  the  Gallic  throne,  and  placed 
an  immortal  classic  in  his  hand  ?  " 

"  All  the  difference,"  said  Gloriosa,  "  that  there  is 
between  the  lowest  and  the  highest  of  any  kind  of 
effort." 


THE  VIA  SEXTA.  251 

"  Precisely,"  said  Prima  ;  "  but  the  same  in  kind, 
essentially;  and  the  great  advantage  we  enjoy  is  that 
our  service,  if  we  arc  called  to  render  it,  may  be  of 
the  finer  grade  and  grain.  I  can  make  beds,  and 
make  bread,  thanks  to  old  Patella  who  has  taught 
me,  but  I  can  do  other  things  which  rank  higher 
than  these  humble  ministries,  and  are  more  elevating, 
and  command  better  rewards.  In  their  place,  the 
lowliest  labor  and  the  lowest  laborer  stand  on  their 
own  merits,  and  if  their  work  is  good  and  true  they 
should  be  respected  accordingly.  I  really  believe 
one  reason  why  this  never-ending  question  of 
Domesticus  is  so  troublesome,  is  because  so  many 
people  have  never  stopped  to  think  of  anything  ex 
cept  the  obligations  of  those  who  serve,  taking 
no  account  of  the  reciprocal  obligation  of  those  who 
are  served.  The  best-bred  men  and  women  are  the 
first  to  acknowledge  this,  and  I  know  very  well  that, 
shiftless  and  short-sighted  and  slow-handed,  as  the 
emissaries  of  Domesticus  may  be,  they  are  quick  to 
discern  the  difference  between  true  gentility  and  its 
counterfeit,  between  a  real  lady  and  a  make-believe 
one." 

"  For  all  that,  Prima,  I  think  you  are  very  un 
grateful  to  talk  as  you  do.  I  cannot  fancy,  marriage 
aside,  you  would  really  prefer  a  life  of  labor  to  living 
at  home." 

"  I  do  not  say  I  would.  It  is  lovely  to  feel  you 
are  free  in  your  father's  house,  but  this  world  is  full 
of  changes,  and  it  is  well,  I  think,  for  every  one  to 
have  in  themselves,  and  to  be  sure  they  have,  the 


252 


DO  ATE  STIC  US. 


will  and  capacity  to  make  their  own  way,  in  spite  of 
circumstance  and  adverse  fate.  I  tell  you,  Gloriosa, 
the  very  first  time  I  ever  tried  to  support  myself, 
just  a  tiny  little  bit,  I  felt  a  kind  of  satisfaction  in 
being  able  to  do  it  that  was  like  a  new  sense  of  life." 

"  What  in  the  world  did  you  do  ?  " 

"  I  just  wrote  out,  almost  in  his  own  words,  a  wild 
sea  story  that  one  of  the  old  fishermen  told  me, 
when  we  were  down  at  the  coast,  and  I  worked  in  a 
description  of  his  cabin,  with  every  queer  thing  that 
was  in  it  and  about  it,  and  had  the  good  luck  to 
have  it  accepted  where  such  things  are  turned  into 
money.  Of  course,  it  was  not  much,  but  it  was 
mine." 

"  Well,  Prima,  plain  as  your  path  may  seem  to 
you,  I  cannot  follow  you  in  it.  If  you  are  going  to 
ostracize  yourself,  and  go  outside  the  pale  of  Societas, 
go  you  must,  but  nobody  will  call  on  you  in  the 
Via  Sexta." 

"  We  shall  see,"  said  Prima.  "  I  shall  not  ex 
pect  any  pretty  little  men,  nor  any  imitation  ladies, 
but  Juventus  has  friends  who  will  not  desert  him, 
and  I  thought  I  had  some  who  would  not  desert 
me." 

"  You  are  so  unreasonable,"  said  Gloriosa.  "  Im 
agine  my  chariot  at  a  shop-door  for  an  afternoon 
call!" 

"  I  shall  not  tax  my  imagination  at  the  expense  of 
your  friendship,"  said  Prima. 

"  It  is  not  a  question  of  friendship,"  said  Gloriosa, 
rising  to  depart.  "  It  is  a  question  of  social  order. 


THE   VIA  SEXTA. 


253 


You  want  to  set  Societas  at  defiance,  and  nobody  is 
strong  enough  for  that.  Anything,  or  anywhere,  in 
a  side  street  will  do,  but  over  a  shop  is  almost  as 
bad  as  in  the  slums." 

"  I  am  not  going  to  be  angry  with  you,"  said 
Prima,  "  no  matter  how  ill  you  treat  me,  but  you 
know  very  well  the  Via  Sexta  is  not  in  the 
slums.  Nor  do  I  want  to  set  Societas  at  defiance. 
How  absurd  for  me,  or  for  any  one  else,  to  run  a  tilt 
against  that  great  goddess  whom  all  the  gay  world 
worships.  Only  I  will  not  be  pressed  into  her  hard 
service.  No  one  can  love  better  than  I  do  the  friend 
liness  of  true  social  intercourse.  It  is  the  very  life 
of  life.  There  are  plenty  of  men  and  women  in  the 
train  of  Societas  who  are  as  good  as  gold,  and  as  true 
as  steel — dear  friends  of  yours  and  mine — whose 
praise  is  always  on  our  lips.  I  have  no  quarrel  with 
them,  but  solely  with  the  system  of  which  they  make 
themselves  a  part,  and  which  they  uphold  in  what 
seems  to  me  its  vicious  methods.  There  is  as  much 
difference  between  genuine  social  friendship  and  its 
counterfeit  in  the  circles  of  Societas,  as  there  is  be 
tween  the  white  and  red  of  Nature  on  the  cheek  of 
a  young  girl  in  the  morning  sunshine,  and  the  chalk 
and  rouge  of  the  tiring-room,  made  ghastly  by  the 
glare  of  the  footlights." 

Gloriosa  shrugged  her  ample  shoulders.  "  If  you 
are  going  into  a  tirade  against  cosmetics,  I  don't 
know  where  you  will  stop.  The  next  thing  you 
will  disavow  your  belief  in  the  three  Graces.  But, 
Prima,  I  must  be  going.  I  am  making  visits,  and 


254 


DO  ME  STIC  US. 


could  not  have  stopped  so  long  with  you  but  that  I 
ran  short  of  Novus'  tablets.  At  my  last  call  I  had 
to  leave  five  of  his  ;  to  be  sure,  it  was  an  extra-sized 
family,  married  daughters  living  at  home,  and  all 
that" 

"  Considering  that  Novus  never  actually  calls  any 
where,  under  any  circumstances,"  said  Prima,  "  leav 
ing  five  of  his  tablets  seems  like  a  great  deal  of  fic 
tion  founded  on  no  fact.  But  since  when  has  there 
been  such  an  increase  in  the  number  of  tablets  dis 
tributable  at  front  doors  ?  " 

"  The  edict  is  only  a  little  more  rigidly  enforced 
this  season,"  said  Gloriosa.  "  It  has  been  duly  pro 
mulgated  by  that  high-priestess  of  Societas,  Bona 
Forma,  who  is  charged  with  the  regulation  of  these 
matters.  Societas  will  not  be  tied  to  a  constitution 
or  a  code,  but  she  makes  and  unmakes  general 
rules,  and  this  is  rule  number  twelve  million  and 
twenty-six.  I  know  it  by  heart.  It  requires  that  in 
the  interchange  of  tablets  one  must  be  left  by,  and 
for,  and  upon,  every  person  of  proper  age,  enrolled 
and  capable  of  duty  in  the  ranks  of  Societas,  pro 
vided  that  the  tablets  of  gentlewomen  shall  be  left 
only  for,  and  upon,  persons  of  the  above  description 
of  their  own  sex,  and  the  tablets  of  men  for,  and 
upon,  persons  of  the  like  description  of  both  sexes, 
unmarried  men  excepted.  Of  course,  everybody 
whose  tablet  is  left  is  not  supposed  to  have  called 
in  person.  It  is  simply  saying  you  called  when 
you  didn't  call ;  but  that  is  all  right  by  every  rule  of 
Societas,  written  or  unwritten.  And  now,  Prima,  I 


THE   VIA  SEXTA. 


255 


have  given  you  fair  warning,  and  I  mean  what  I 
have  said.  You  are  going  to  put  yourself  out  of 
the  pale,  and  as  long  as  you  persist  in  your  insane 
ways  we  must  treat  you  accordingly.  I  don't 
believe  you  will  be  as  bad  as  you  threaten,  so  I 
wish  you  good-bye,  and  a  better  mind." 

"  Good-bye,"  said  Prima,  and  they  parted  with  a 
kiss,  in  which  the  fervor  of  their  old  friendship 
seemed,  to  each  of  them,  to  have  been  checked 
by  a  sudden  chill. 


CHAPTER  XXIII. 

A   MARRIAGE    NOT    A    LA    MODE. 

TUVENTUS  and  Primawere  married  in  the  early 
I  days  of  Autumn,  in  a  quiet  way,  quite  at  vari 
ance  with  the  prevailing  fashion  of  the  Imperial 
City  in  the  matter  of  weddings.  There  were  a  few 
friends,  a  few  flowers,  and  a  few  presents.  Gloriosa 
sent  her  greetings,  in  spite  of  her  disapproval,  from 
the  sea-side  metropolis  where  she  was  revolving  in  a 
whirligig  of  festivities,  almost  as  exciting  and  as 
exacting  as  those  of  the  Imperial  City  at  the  height 
of  its  gayest  season,  and  with  them,  a  colossal 
souvenir  which  Prima  thought  would  seem  strangely 
out  of  keeping  with  the  modest  conditions  of  Via 
Sexta. 

"  How  very  apt  people  are  to  resemble  their  pres 
ents!"  said  the  Princess  to  Prima,  when  this  elabor 
ate  piece  was  unpacked.  "Gloriosa  is  nothing  if 
not  beyond  bounds,  and  this  efflorescent  epergne, 
with  its  outspreading  branches,  calls  for  a  table 
at  least  six  feet  wide  and  pulled  out  for  fourteen 
people." 

"  It  is  lovely  in  her  to  have  sent  it,"  said  Prima, 
"  and  certainly  it  is  very  handsome.  I  shall  hope 
to  be  able  to  live  up  to  it  some  day.  But  I  am  so 
256 


A  MARRIAGE  NOT  A  LA  MODE. 


257 


glad  that,  as  we  arc  placed  just  now,  we  are  rid  of 
the  conventional  present,  and  that  Societas  has 
levied  no  assessment  for  my  benefit  on  any  of  her 
members.  How  charming  are  these  little  remem 
brances  which  express  real  affection!  I  had  no 
idea  so  many  of  my  old  friends  would  keep  me  in 
mind;  and  nothing  touches  me  more  than  this  won 
derful  catch-bag  which  old  Patella  has  worked,  with 
its  marvels  of  embroidery." 

"  I  wonder  where  Stella  is,"  said  the  Princess.  "  I 
would  be  so  glad  to  have  her  here." 

Patella  had  tried,  at  the  instance  of  Prima,  to 
discover  the  whereabouts  of  Stella,  but  thus  far  in 
vain.  She  had  left  the  house,  and  apparently  the 
neighborhood,  in  which  she  had  lived  after  her 
marriage,  and  no  one  could  be  found  who  knew 
whither  she  had  gone. 

The  wedding  over,  and  the  short  trip  which  fol 
lowed  it  ended,  the  newly-married  pair  took  posses 
sion  of  their  home  in  the  Via  Sexta,  not  without 
many  strivings  of  heart  on  the  part  of  the  Prince 
and  the  Little  Lady,  to  whom,  in  the  changed  con 
dition  of  their  affairs,  the  marriage  of  Prima  and 
her  departure  from  their  loving  care  and  compan 
ionship,  almost  empty-handed,  and  to  so  lowly  a 
home,  was  the  sorest  trial  they  had  encountered. 

The  Prince  had,  at  first,  been  unwilling  to  accede 
to  the  plans  of  Juventus.  He  foresaw  many  objec 
tions  and  difficulties,  even  after  the  Princess  had 
been  won  over  to  the  side  of  the  adventurous  lovers. 
'7 


2cj3  DO  ME  STIC  US. 

He  pleaded  for  a  side  street,  and  thought  the 
combined  effect  of  the  Via  Sexta  and  the  shop 
would  be  fatal  to  the  social  prospects  of  the  young 
couple. 

"  I  thought  so,  myself,"  said  the  Princess, "  but 
Juventus  declares  he  has  walked  a  hundred  miles  in 
the  side  streets,  and  explored  innumerable  houses ; 
the  result  is  he  must  spend  the  bulk  of  his  pay  for 
rent,  or  go  where  that  single  item  will  not  eat  up  all 
his  earnings.  He  wants  to  be  within  walking  dis 
tance  of  his  work,  and  his  whole  future  hinges  on 
the  question  of  rent.  We  are  all  the  time  crying 
out  against  the  obstacles  the  high  prices  put  in 
the  way  of  the  marrying  of  young  people.  Here 
you  have  a  couple  with  courage  enough  to  accept 
the  only  possible  solution." 

"  If  the  house  must  be  in  the  Via  Sexta,  I  wish 
it  might  be  on  a  corner,  with  the  entrance  on  the 
side  street,"  said  the  Prince;  "that  would  be  a  kind 
of  compromise." 

"  You  will  never  get  Juventus,  nor  Prima,  to  make 
compromises  for  the  sake  of  their  footing  with  Socie- 
tas.  They  will  hold  their  ground  and  their  one 
flight  up,  against  a  world  in  arms.  A  girl  may  go 
from  the  Via  Quinta,  three  thousand  miles,  to  a  cat 
tle  ranch  in  Ultima  Occidente,  and  her  bravery  will 
be  applauded.  Is  the  quiet,  stay-at-home  courage 
which  takes  Prima  a  single  block  off,  to  be  fol 
lowed  with  hisses  and  cat-calls  ?  " 

"  It  surely  will  be,"  replied  the  Prince,  "because 
Societas  draws  her  strictest  lines  at  just  such  points 


A  MARRIAGE  NOT  A  LA  AfODE. 


259 


as  this,  and  forbids  the  bans  where  a  couple  pro 
pose  to  live  without  her  limits,  in  order  to  live 
within  their  means." 

"In  other  words,"  cried  the  Princess,  "  Socictas 
will  permit  every  sacrifice  at  her  own  shrine,  but 
none  at  the  old  altar  fires  of  the  heart !  " 

"  Of  course,"  said  the  Prince,  "  there  is  no  more 
sentiment  about  Societas  than  there  is  about  a  dia 
mond-broker,  but  no  end  of  shrewdness  and  prac 
tical  wisdom.  Aside  from  all  that,  these  children 
are  taking  a  considerable  risk.  Juventus  may  be 
stricken  down  with  illness — many  a  man  is." 

"  He  is  not  very  likely  to  be,"  said  the  Princess. 
"  He  went  through  the  war  without  any  serious 
injury  ;  he  is  in  good  health,  and  will  be  much 
more  likely  to  keep  so  if  he  has  a  comfortable 
home  and  regular  hours,  a  bright  fireside  and  a 
loving  wife." 

"  He  may  be  killed,  or  meet  with  some  accident." 

"  Then  Prima  can  come  to  us  ;  besides,  there  are 
the  great  guilds  which  provide  for  such  emergen 
cies,  and  Juventus  has  already  made  arrangements 
with  them." 

The  Prince  suggested  that  in  the  account  current 
of  married  people  the  most  formidable  debit  item 
might  be  a  baby. 

The  Little  Lady  had  never  been  frightened  by  a 
baby,  and  never  meant  to  be.  Twins  had  no  terrors 
for  her. 

The  Prince  was  silenced,  though  not  convinced ; 
and  he  gave  Prima  away,  with  some  misgivings, 


26o  DOMESTICUS. 

and  yet  satisfied,  in  his  heart  of  hearts,  that 
the  pledges  Juventus  had  given  to  fortune  when 
his  marriage  vows  were  uttered  would  surely  be 
redeemed. 

Brighter  days  were  at  hand  for  the  Prince. 

The  new  era  of  peace  and  prosperity  which  fol 
lowed  the  ending  of  the  strife  brought  with  it 
a  great  increase  in  the  values  of  property,  and 
opened  a  wide  door  for  every  description  of  renewed 
activity. 

The  great  tidal  wave  of  inflation,  following  on 
the  permanent  exchange  of  paper  promises  for 
gold  coin,  lifted  things  which  had  been  supposed 
to  be  mere  wreckage  and  drift-wood  into  values 
which  were  as  unexpected  as  they  were  excessive. 
In  the  Imperial  City,  vast  public  improvements  were 
projected  and  carried  forward,  especially  in  the 
quarter  which  included  the  lands  of  the  Prince;  and 
as  the  sequel  of  what  seemed,  at  the  outset,  the  un 
reasoning  obstinacy  of  the  Little  Lady,  resulting  in 
the  withholding  of  these  lands  from  sale,  the  time 
came  when  their  new  value  made  it  easy  to  provide 
for  the  bulk  of  his  whole  outstanding  indebtedness, 
after  applying  his  other  means  of  payment  to  the 
satisfaction  of  his  creditors.  • 

Some  fortunate  events,  among  which  was  the  recla 
mation  of  a  large  quantity  of  the  staple  product  of  the 
nether  side  of  the  invisible  line,  shipped  to  him  by  his 
chief  debtors,  just  at  the  breaking  out  of  the  strife, 
and  so  intercepted  that  it  had  been  held,  during  all  the 


A  MARRIAGE  NOT  A  LA  MODE.  26l 

years  of  the  conflict,  without  capture  or  destruction, 
aided  to  swell  his  assets.  By  the  good  manage 
ment  of  Vindex,  the  happy  day  came  at  last  after 
long  and  weary  waiting,  when  the  whole  heavy  load 
could  be  lifted.  The  outcome  was  far  better  than 
even  he  had  ever  dared  to- hope.  The  Prince  would 
be  stripped,  to  be  sure,  of  his  wealth,  but  he  would  be 
out  of  debt,  and  the  palace  was  saved,  so  that  he 
could  secure  it  to  the  Princess,  free  and  clear,  and 
his  new  business  alliances  were  such  as  to  ensure 
ample  means  for  his  comfortable  living,  and  the  pos 
sible  nucleus  of  a  fresh  fortune. 

The  debts  all  satisfied,  including  the  timely  ad 
vances  made  by  Vindex,  at  the  time  of  the  failure, 
for  the  purchase  of  the  claim  of  Furax,  the  old  juris 
consult  was  able  to  assure  the  Little  Lady  that  she 
was  the  owner,  in  her  own  right,  of  the  home  she 
had  loved  so  much ;  that  the  balance  due  every 
creditor  was  satisfied  out  of  the  proceeds  of  the  other 
lands,  and  that  there  was  enough  left  to  represent 
her  dower  right,  which  the  Prince,  and  not  the  credi 
tors,  could  now  make  good  to  her  by  a  conveyance 
of  the  palace  on  the  Via  Quinta. 

All  this  she  understood  when  she  united  with 
Assignatus,  as  occasion  required,  in  signing  the 
deeds  of  the  lands,  as  they  were  now  sold,  from  time 
to  time.  But  the  matter  of  the  furniture  she  could 
not  fully  comprehend.  And  before  she  would  con 
sent  to  re-enter  the  palace  as  its  owner,  she  must  see 
Vindex  face  to  face  once  more,  and  learn  the  whole 
truth.  The  furniture,  although  hers  from  the  day 


262  DOMEST1CUS. 

and  date  of  the  bill  of  sale,  she  had  never  touched. 
The  palace  had  been  advantageously  rented  and 
well  tenanted  during  most  of  the  time  since  the  out 
cry  took  place,  and  a  due  proportion  of  the  rent  had 
been  religiously  reserved,  by  the  vigilance  of  Vin- 
dex,  for  the  Princess,  as  representing  the  use  of  her 
furniture  by  the  tenant,  but  even  this  she  would 
not  accept.  Now  that  the  whole  tangle  was  about 
to  be  unravelled,  she  must  be  sure  there  was  no 
dishonest  nor  doubtful  thread  in  the  confused  mass. 
Vindex  had  met  the  Little  Lady  frequently  dur 
ing  the  long  interval  between  his  first  repulse  in  the 
matter  of  the  dower  right,  and  the  present  better  time, 
but  he  had  made  no  progress  in  gaining  her  over  to 
his  views.  On  the  contrary,  she  had  nipped  in  the 
bud  a  project  he  had  hoped  to  mature  for  a  compro 
mise  with  the  Prince's  creditors  by  paying  sixty  per 
cent,  of  his  debts.  After  satisfying  himself  that  it 
would  be  accepted  by  the  great  body  of  the  creditors, 
he  had  broached  the  subject  cautiously  to  the  Prin 
cess,  whose  consent  was  necessary,  as  the  execution 
of  the  scheme  involved  the  sale  of  the  lands,  free  of 
her  dower,  which  he  meant  to  provide  for  as  a  part 
of  the  settlement.  When  he  had  unfolded  his  plan, 
the  Princess  asked,  first  of  all : — 

"  Would  such  a  settlement  be  honest?  " 
"  Most  assuredly,"  said  Vindex  ;  "  men  who  fail 
for  over  a  million  are  not  expected  to  pay  in  full." 
1  Then  the  Prince  would  never  be  out  of  debt?" 
"  Yes ;    he   would   be   entirely   out    of  debt ;    he 
would  have  satisfied  all  claims  and  be  free  to  take  a 


A  AMA'AY./oY-.  NOT  A  LA  MODE.  263 

fresh  start.  It  is  in  the  interest  of  the  whole  com 
munity  that  this  should  be  the  method  of  giving 
honest  debtors  new  opportunities." 

"  Suppose,  by  new  opportunity,  the  honest  debtor 
retrieves  his  losses  and  becomes  able  to  pay  the 
deficiency;  is  he  not  bound  to  do  it  ?" 

"  No,"  said  Vindex,  "  he  is  not  bound." 

"  Legally,  not,  I  suppose,"  said  the  Princess,  "  but 
in  honor  and  good  conscience  ?  " 

"  No,  again.  Because  there  is  no  standard  by 
which  to  determine  a  fancied  obligation  resting  on 
honor  or  conscience,  and  not  on  right  as  fixed  by 
law.  A  debtor  whose  debt  is  once  discharged  never 
owes  that  debt  again,  or  any  part  of  it.  If,  after 
ward,  he  is  so  placed  that,  without  injustice  to 
others,  he  can  gratify  his  particular  sense  of  obliga 
tion  by  giving  his  former  creditors  the  bal  mce  of 
their  discharged  claims,  this  is  his  own  affair.  He 
cannot  gauge  his  action  by  anything  save  his  in 
dividual  choice.  The  community  does  not  require 
or  expect  it  of  him,  and  he  comes  under  no  dis 
credit  or  criticism  for  not  doing  it,  because,  in  the 
long  run,  and  under  ordinary  conditions,  it  is  im 
possible,  in  a  single  life,  with  all  its  many  responsi 
bilities  and  vicissitudes,  for  a  man  to  re-open  what 
is  closed,  and  to  add  to  the  necessity  of  meeting 
present  demands  the  luxury  of  providing  for  those 
which  have  been  cancelled  in  the  past.  If  the  law 
of  the  land  discharges  a  man  from  his  debts,  and  a 
supposed  social  law  holds  him  undischarged,  the 
honest  debtor  who  has  paid  all  he  could,  and  whose 


264  DOMESTICUS. 

after-acquired  means  are  needed  for  his  family  and 
his  new  engagements,  will  never  be  freed,  either  in 
the  eye  of  his  own  conscience,  or  in  the  regard  of 
his  fellows." 

"  I  see,"  said  the  Princess;  "  it  is  purely  a  question 
of  choice,  depending  on  the  circumstances  of  the 
individual." 

"Just  so,"  said  Vindex. 

"  But  for  all  that,  better  pay  the  whole  than  a  part, 
if  possible." 

"  Of  course,  if  the  means  exist." 

"  I  believe  they  will  exist  for  us,"  said  the  Prin 
cess.  "And  I  would  rather  wait  and  take  all  the 
chances  than  compromise  with  the  creditors  now 
and  leave  any  question  for  the  future,  after  the  fresh 
start  has  been  taken.  Depend  upon  it,  the  money 
will  come,  and  then  we  shall  pay  all  and  be  wiser 
for  the  future.  What  does  Novus  call  it  when  he 
says  that  something  that  is  going  to  happen  happens 
a  month  or  so  before  it  happens  ?  " 

"  I  suppose  he  says,  in  the  dialect  of  his  venture 
some  calling,  that  it  has  been  '  discounted.'  " 

"  Yes,  that  is  it.  Well,  I  think  the  best  way  to  dis 
count  one's  debts  is  to  pay  them  in  full  as  soon  as 
one  has  the  money  in  hand,  and  not  leave  anything 
for  conscience,  or  honor,  or  yourself,  or  other  people, 
to  worry  about  in  the  future." 

The  Little  Lady's  prediction  had  now  come  true, 
and  at  last  Vindex  felt  sure  that  there  could  be  no 
possible  want  of  accord  between  her  and  himself. 
He  responded  cheerfully  to  her  summons,  which  had 


A  MARRIAGE  NOT  A  LA  ^rODE.  26$ 

been  conveyed  by  a  note  requesting  him  to  call  on 
her  and  receive  in  person  her  thanks  for  all  his 
kindness. 

"  Is  it  quite  certain,"  she  asked,  after  a  warm  greet 
ing  of  the  self-constituted  and  persistent  guardian 
of  her  rights,  "  that  the  Prince  is  going  to  be  entirely 
out  of  debt  ?  " 

"  Absolutely  certain,"  said  Vindex.  "  It  is  a  great 
deliverance,  and  I  congratulate  you." 

"  I  am  sure,"  said  the  Princess,  "  we  owe  it  very 
much  to  you,  and  you  must  not  think  me  ungrateful, 
and  self-willed,  and  opinionated,  even  if  I  have 
appeared  so.  Only  where  I  could  not  see,  I  did  not 
lilce  to  walk.  Now  I  want  you  to  add  to  all  your 
good  offices  the  final  assurance,  before  we  return  to 
the  dear  old  house,  that  every  creditor  is  paid  all 
that  is  owing  him." 

"  Certainly,"  said  Vindex,  "  that  is  so." 

"  Even  Furax  ?  "  said  the  Princess. 

"  Furax  be — "  I  grieve  to  record  the  fact  that  the 
good  old  jurisconsult  had  it,  for  a  second,  in  his 
over-taxed  temper,  and  on  his  too  tempted  tongue, 
to  give  utterance  to  a  sentiment  which  would  have 
been  most  unseemly  and  out  of  place.  Fortunately, 
he  checked  himself  in  time,  and  the  words  he 
uttered  reached  the  ears  of  the  Princess  in  unexcep 
tionable  form. 

"  Furax  be — ing  no  longer  a  creditor,  has  no  con 
cern  with  the  settlement." 

"But  he  was  a  creditor,"  said  the  Princess,  "  and 
the  one  who  made  the  first  trouble — and  the  only 


266  D  OMES  TIC  US, 

trouble — and  who  sold  the  furniture;  and  what  I 
want  to  know  is  whether  he  will  get  his  whole 
debt  ?  " 

"  His  whole  debt,  and  claim,  and  proceedings,  were 
bought  in  the  beginning,  and  he  was  paid  off.  I 
bought  them  myself,  for  yaur  benefit,  and  paid  the 
money ;  I  have  been  repaid,  and  we  have  no  more 
to  do  with  Furax,  now,  than  with  the  man  in  the 
moon." 

"  I  supposed  you  were  at  the  bottom  of  the  furni 
ture  sale.  Prima  found  it  out  before  I  did.  Of 
course,  if  I  had  known  what  you  were  doing,  and 
that  it  was  all  for  my  benefit,  I  should  not  have  be 
haved  so  foolishly.  You  must  have  thought  very 
badly  of  me  for  going  to  the  outcry,  but  I  really 
could  not  help  it." 

"  I  think  it  was  very  natural,"  said  Vindex. 

"  And  very  naughty,  I  suppose  ?  " 

"  Your  naughtiness  does  not  interfere  with  me 
half  as  much  as  your  goodness, — your  overstrained 
and  over-scrupulous  honesty.  My  dear  Princess,  I 
am  afraid  you  are  color-blind  in  this  matter  of 
debtor  and  creditor.  Why  do  you  want  to  know 
anything  more  about  Furax  ?  He  has  been  paid." 

"  But  has  he  been  paid  in  full  ?  " 

"  He  has  been  paid  more  than  he  deserved.  He 
was  only  too  glad  when  the  failure  took  place  to  get 
half  his  debt,  and  so  would  all  the  creditors  have 
been,  could  we  have  paid  them  at  that  time." 

"Then  the  Prince  still  owes  Furax  the  other  half 
of  his  debt?" 


A  MARRIAGE  NOT  A  LA  MODE.  26/ 

11  He  does  not  owe  him  a  single  sesterium,"  said 
Vindex.  "  Pardon  my  saying  it,  but  you  are  the  most 
outrageously  and  provokingly  honest  woman  I  ever 
met.  If  everybody  were  like  you,  we  could  not  get 
on  a  step.  When  a  man  is  willing  to  take  half  his 
debt  for  the  whole,  he  may  sell  it;  just  as  you  might 
sell  the  shawl  you  have  on  your  shoulders  for  half 
its  value,  if  you  preferred  having  the  money  to  keep 
ing  the  shawl.  When  I  bought  the  claim  of  Furax 
I  became  the  owner,  and  whatever  was  owing  him, 
before  I  bought  it,  became  due  to  me." 

"Dear  me!"  said  the  Princess.  "  Then  we  owe 
him,  and  you  besides  !  " 

"  You  don't  owe  him  anything,  and  you  don't 
owe  me  anything — we  have  both  been  paid  in  full." 

"  I  cannot  see  how,"  persisted  the  Princess,  "  if 
neither  Furax  nor  you  ever  got  more  than  half  the 
debt.  Where  is  Furax?" 

"  He  is  dead,"  said  Vindex. 

"  Then  we  must  pay  his  widow." 

"  He  was  an  old  bachelor,"  said  Vindex.  "  That 
accounts  for  his  being  so  unfeeling.  He  had  no 
wife,  nor  children,  nor  relations." 

"  I  never  heard  of  any  one  who  had  no  relations, 
so  long  as  he  had  any  money,"  said  the  Princess ; 
"but  suppose  he  really  had  none,  what  then  ?  " 

"  Then  it  would  escheat  and  go  to  the  State,  and 
the  politicians  would  probably  contrive  to  get  hold 
of  it  and  squander  it  for  base  purposes." 

"  How  dreadful  "  said  the  Princess.  "  I  never 
knew  before  that  escheating  and  cheating  meant  the 


DOMESTICUS. 

same  thing.  There  is  no  safety  except  in  never 
owing  a  debt." 

"  That,  madam,"  said  Vindex,  "  is  a  sentiment 
which  ought  to  be  written,  in  letters  of  gold,  on  all 
the  door  posts  and  lintels  of  the  land." 

"What  is  to  be  done  ?  "  said  the  Princess.  "  I  will 
never  be  satisfied  till  that  debt  is  paid." 

"  We  will  do  this,"  said  Vindex,  who  had  perhaps 
pushed  the  matter  of  the  entire  failure  of  next  of 
kin  of  the  deceased  Furax,  as  he  had  the  corrup 
tion  of  the  politicians,  somewhat  beyond  the  pos 
sible  reality ;  "  we  will  make  inquiry,  and  set 
apart  a  sufficient  sum  to  provide  for  this  balance  of 
a  debt  which  is  due  to  nobody.  What  I  want  is  to 
get  you,  and  your  husband,  and  children,  back  into 
the  palace,  which  there  was  really  never  any  occa 
sion  for  your  leaving,  but  '  all's  well  that  ends 
well.' " 

"We  will  go  back  on  the  Prince's  birthday ;  it  will 
come  just  a  week  from  to-day,"  said  the  Little  Lady, 
"  and  we  will  have  Juventus  and  Prima  with  us,  and 
you  must  certainly  join  us  at  dinner,  won't  you?  " 

The  invitation  was  gladly  accepted.  The  old 
jurisconsult,  who  had  never  been  captured  by  the 
softer  charms  of  the  sex,  was  in  love  with  the  hard 
obstinacy  of  the  Princess. 

"  I  must  reverse  the  usual  method,"  he  said  to 
the  Prince,  "  in  dealing  with  your  amiable  wife.  I 
censure  her  to  her  face,  and  praise  her  behind  her 
back.  She  is  the  first  woman  I  ever  met  who  is 
entirely  too  good  for  this  world." 


A  MARRIAGE  NOT  A  LA  MODE.  269 

"  I  have  thought  so  for  more  than  a  score  of 
years,"  said  the  Prince,  "and  have  been  only  top 
glad  and  grateful  that  she  is  permitted  to  stay  in  it 
for  my  particular  benefit." 

"  Look  out  never  to  fail  again ;  she  will  want  to 
pay  everybody  two  hundred  cents  on  the  dollar." 

"She  knows  no  such  word  as  fail,"  said  the 
Prince.  "  and  I  trust  I  never  shall,  again." 


CHAPTER  XXIV. 

HOME   AGAIN. 

rPHE  restored  family  circle,  gathered  in  anticipa- 
1  tion  of  a  birthday  dinner,  was  a  very  happy 
one.  The  children  were  radiant  with  a  new  sense 
of  delight.  Juventus  and  Prima  pleased  themselves 
with  the  fancy  that  the  renewed  warmth  and  bright 
ness  of  the  palace  were  only  beams  from  the  same 
central  source  which  irradiated  the  narrower  precincts 
of  their  Via  Sexta  home.  The  Prince  and  Princess 
were  contentedly  serene. 

"  You  and  Juventus  must  break  up  where  you 
are,  and  come  to  live  with  us,"  said  the  Prince  to 
Prima. 

"After  a  little,"  said  Prima;  "we  cannot,  just  yet, 
bring  our  minds  to  the  sacrifice  involved  in  leaving 
the  home  we  have  made;  and  there  is  another  source 
of  embarrassment  in  deciding  on  the  conflicting 
claims  of  half  a  dozen  couples  who,  as  soon  as  the 
rumor  was  about  that  you  were  to  return  here,  have 
been  besieging  us  for  the  refusal  of  our  apartment 
We  have  set  a  fashion  that  is  going  to  be  followed." 

"  Take  your  own  time,"  said  the  Prince,  "  only 
remember  that  home,  here,  will  hardly  be  home 
without  you.  But  what  has  become  of  Vindex? 
270 


HOME  AGAIN.  271 

He  is  usually  very  prompt,  and  it  is  a  quarter  of 
an  hour  past  the  time." 

Vindex  came  very  late.  Another  quarter  of  an 
hour  passed  before  he  entered  with  warm  greetings 
for  all,  but  with  something  like  a  cloud  resting  on 
his  brow. 

"  I  am  sorry  to  have  kept  you  waiting,  and  more 
sorry  for  the  cause  of  my  delay.  I  bring  bad  news. 
Novus  has  come  to  great  grief.  He  has  broken 
to  pieces.  It  has  just  come  out  that  he  has  been 
engaged  in  the  wildest  speculations,  which  have  gone 
frightfully  wrong.  He  has  used  up  all  his  own 
means  and  eveiybody's  else  he  could  lay  his  hands 
on,  including  what  he  had  settled  on  Gloriosa.and  has 
wound  up  by  running  away,  probably  beyond  sea." 

"  I  thought  Gloriosa  had  her  marriage  portion 
secured,"  said  Prima.  "  She  told  me  so  herself." 

11  Yes,  but  Novus  contrived  by  orders  in  her  name, 
which  I  fear  were  forged,  to  get  control  of  the 
securities,  and  they  are  all  pledged  for  his  debts. 
Something  may  be  saved,  but  it  is  a  wretched  busi 
ness." 

"  It  is  very  sad,"  said  the  Prince.  "  Novus  had 
enough  long  ago,  if  he  had  only  been  willing  to 
think  so." 

"  To  know  when  one  has  enough,"  said  Vindex, 
"  is  to  be  wiser  than  the  wisest.  Novus  took  it  into 
his  head  that  he  was  predestined  by  the  Fates  to  be 
a  very  rich  man  ;  a  ruinous  illusion  unless  they  pre 
destine  unlimited  cash  balances  for  every  day's  ven 
tures." 


DO  ME  STIC  US. 

"The  craze  after  money  seems  to  be  taking  this 
form,"  said  the  Prince.  "  Men  are  not  satisfied  with 
being  rich,  or  trying  to  be  rich ;  they  must  be  very 
rich.  I  remember  when  the  Chief  Heralder  pub 
lished  a  little  book,  years  ago,  in  which  he  gave  a 
list  of  the  wealthy  men  in  the  Imperial  City,  and 
every  one  who  was  supposed  to  possess  a  hundred 
thousand  sestertia  was  set  down  in  it.  And  I  have 
known  men  retire  from  business  on  less  than  that  in 
days  long  gone  by.  But  the  time  of  moderation  is 
past.  In  the  thirst  for  gain  shallow  draughts  in 
toxicate,  and  drinking  deep  does  not  sober  but 
drives  mad." 

"  I  almost  wish  for  the  time,"  said  the  Princess, 
"when  very  rich  men  will  go  out  of  fashion.  They 
seem  to  do  more  harm  than  good ;  they  do  not  pro 
duce  half  as  much  envy  among  people  who  have 
nothing,  as  they  create  dissatisfaction  and  a  kind  of 
overstrained  imitation  on  the  part  of  people  who 
have  neither  the  means  to  compete  with  them,  nor 
the  moral  courage  to  forego  the  effort  at  competi 
tion." 

"  Your  wish  will  hardly  be  gratified,  at  least  in 
my  time,"  said  Vindex.  The  objects  of  worship 
which  we  create  for  ourselves,  however  unworthy, 
are  the  last  to  go  to  the  moles  and  the  bats,  where 
they  belong.  The  greed  of  gain  and  the  idolatry 
of  wealth  are  the  two  middle  pillars  on  which  the 
temple  of  Societas  stands,  and  by  which  it  is  borne 
up,  and  there  is  no  power  mighty  enough  to  bow 
down  upon  them  and  drag  them  to  the  earth.  The 


HOME  AGAIN. 


273 


tyranny  of  Socictas  has  its  main- stay  in  the  com 
pulsory  extravagance  and  immoderation  which  it 
establishes  as  the  rule  of  its  service." 

"  What  can  be  done  ?  "  said  the  Prince.  "  Every 
thing  goes  to  extremes  with  us.  Magna  Patria  is 
a  very  young  and  fast  growing  nation,  and,  I  sup 
pose,  must  have  its  fling  at  everything  before  settling 
down  to  steady  habits.  If  you  ever  tried  to  put  a 
halter  on  a  colt  in  a  ten-acre  lot,  you  know  he  would 
have  his  turn  in  ever/  corner  before  you  caught 
him." 

"  True  enough,"  said  Vindex  ;  "  and  as  the  young 
people  are  very  much  in  the  ascendant  in  this  young 
country,  perhaps  every  fashion  and  folly  must  run 
its  course;  but,  meanwhile,  there  ought  to  be  some 
sound  leaven  in  the  great,  seething  mass  ;  seven 
hundred,  if  not  seven  thousand,  who  are  not  bowing 
the  knee  to  Societas  when  she  requires  the  sacrifice 
of  health,  or  good  morals,  or  the  rigid  honesty 
which  forbids  transgression  of  the  good  old-fash 
ioned  rule  of  living  within  one's  means." 

44  Or,"  said  the  Princess,  "  when  she  seeks  to  poison 
the  very  springs  of  the  higher  nature.  Societas  per 
mits  and  even  patronizes  many  things  that  are  good 
and  charitable,  but  we  all  know  that  the  better  life  of 
which  we  are  capable,  and  which  so  many  honestly 
crave,  cannot  possibly  thrive  on  her  barren  levels 
and  in  her  unfriendly  soil.  She  is  of  the  earth, 
earthy,  and  so  must  they  be  who  will  be  hers.  But 
I  believe  the  time  will  come  when  there  will  be 
people  enough  to  create  circles  in  which  good  sense 
18 


274  DOMESTICUS. 

and  gayety  can  go  hand  in  hand,  so  that  young  girls 
as  gifted  by  nature  in  their  heads  as  in  their  heels, 
and  yet  who  want  to  use  both,  will  not  find  them 
selves  clapped  into  a  kind  of  debtor's  jail  by  Socie- 
tas  because  they  will  not  pay  her  tax  to  the  utter 
most  farthing." 

"  Poor,  dear  Gloriosa,"  said  Prima,  "  that  is  where 
she  wanted  to  put  me,  on  bread  and  water,  because 
I  was  obstinate  enough  to  want  my  own  little  way 
against  Societas,  and  have  my  tiny  bit  of  a  fling  in 
the  contrary  direction  from  hers.  I  am  almost 
afraid  I  overdid  my  opposition  and  really  offended 
her,  which  I  would  not  have  done  for  the  world. 
She  drove  me  to  talking  as  I  did,  and  if  all  I  said 
were  written  down  or  repeated,  I  fear  people  would 
think  I  was  pragmatical  and  a  prig.  But  I  am  not 
a  prig.  Am  I,  Juventus  ?  " 

"  I  never  saw  a  prig,"  said  Juventus,  pausing  over 
his  capon.  "  They  don't  grow  wild  in  Dirigo  and 
I  have  not  encountered  them  here.  I  really  don't 
know  what  a  prig  is." 

"  I  know  !  "  cried  Secundus.  "  The  Princess  Pug- 
nax  keeps  one.  It  is  her  grown-up  grand-daughter. 
She  takes  hold  of  things  as  if  they  were  eels,  like 
this—." 

And  Secundus  gave  a  vivid  pantomimic  illus 
tration  drawn  from  his  last  summer's  experience  in 
a  fish-pond. 

"And  she  talks  the  same  way,"  exclaimed  Tertia, 
eager  to  impart  her  quota  of  information  to  Juven 
tus,  who,  up  to  this  time,  she  supposed,  knew  every- 


HOME  AGAIN.  2/5 

thing.  "  She  is  perfectly  horrid ;  she  is  going  to 
establish  a  society  to  suppress  toys,  and  story  books, 
and  dancing  schools,  and — " 

"Children!"  said  the  Princess,  "You  know  it  is 
against  all  rules  to  talk  at  the  table  about  the  pecu 
liarities  of  people." 

"  Yes,  mamma,"  said  Tertia,  subsiding  into  si 
lence,  but  rather  under  protest  "  Only  \ve  are  not 
talking  about  people,  but  about  prigs." 

"I  wonder,"  said  Prima,  "where  Gloriosa  is.  She 
was  still  out  of  town  day  before  yesterday.  I  would 
so  like  to  help  her — but  what  consolation  can  any 
one  offer  her  ?  She  is  worse  than  widowed.  And  I 
love  her  so  dearly  !" 

The  Prince  could  not  but  recall  his  own  hour  of 
calamity;  the  loving  help  that  had  been  to  him  like 
a  fountain  of  living  water  in  the  desert ;  the  sweet 
uses  of  adversity  which  he  had  known ;  the  happy 
issue  out  of  all  his  troubles  which  he  had  been 
granted,  and  which,  while  leaving  him  poorer  in  this 
world's  goods,  had  enriched  him  with  treasures  he 
felt  would  never  fail.  He  said,  quietly,  "May  Glo 
riosa  find  shelter  and  succor  from  some  loving  heart 
and  in  some  happy  home." 

They  were  still  lingering  at  the  table,  late  in  the 
evening,  detained  not  so  much  by  its  good  cheer  as 
by  the  entertaining  talk  of  Vindex,  who  found  in  such 
companionship  as  this  his  best  relaxation  and  recrea 
tion  from  the  cares  and  toils  which  were  his  constant 
portion,  when  the  Princess  rose  and  excused  herself, 


2;6  DOME  STIC  US. 

saying  that  she  had  been  summoned  to  speak  with 
some  one  who  must  see  her  instantly. 

She  entered  the  dimly-lighted  reception-room.  A 
woman  waiting  in  the  darkness  suddenly  threw  back 
her  veil,  and  caught  her  by  both  hands. 

"  Gloriosa  !  is  this  you  ?  " 

"  Yes,  it  is  I.  I  am  distracted — almost  beside 
myself.  Have  you  heard  that  Novus  has  betrayed 
me,  in  every  way,  and  is  hiding,  or  has  fled  ?  They 
are  searching  the  house.  It  is  dreadful !  I  cannot 
stop  there.  None  of  my  people  are  in  town.  I 
only  came  yesterday.  I  cannot  go  to  any  of  my 
set.  They  are  not  friends  for  a  trouble  like  this. 
I  want  you  to  help  me.  I  heard  you  were  home 
again,  so  I  came  here.  It  will  kill  me.  To  leave 
me  penniless  !  Oh  the  cowardice  of  it,  and  the 
shame  of  it !  I  am  only  glad  I  have  no  children  to 
be  beggared  along  with  me." 

She  sank  on  the  chair  the  Princess  had  drawn 
toward  her,  while  she  still  held  her  hand. 

"  My  poor  Gloriosa,  I  am  so  glad  you  came  to 
us.  There  is  a  home  for  you  here,  if  nowhere  else. 
The  Prince  will  advise  you,  and  Vindex,  the  best, 
wisest,  truest  of  friends,  will  take  your  case  in  hand. 
But  just  now  what  you  need  is  rest  and  perfect  quiet ; 
dismiss  your  attendant  and  stay  with  me.  You  shall 
see  no  one — not  even  Prima." 

"  It  would  kill  me  to  see  her  now,"  said  Gloriosa. 
"I  have  treated  her  badly;  but  what  a  punish 
ment  to  fall  on  me — and  I  gave  him  no  cause. 
It  was  his  extravagance — not  mine — and  to  cheat 


HOME  AGAIN. 


277 


me  out  of  what  was  my  own.  It  is  infamous! 
Infamous!" 

The  Princess  compelled  her  to  remain.  After 
sending  a  brief  message  to  Prima,  to  explain  her 
absence,  and  to  save  Gloriosa  from  intrusion,  she 
took  her  to  the  apartment  adjoining  her  own;  gently 
forced  her  to  take  some  needed  stimulant;  stayed 
with  her,  soothing,  calming  and  consoling  her,  as  if 
she  were  her  own  child;  and,  finally,  when  she  was 
quieted  into  a  better  condition,  left  her  in  the  keep 
ing  of  Patella,  who  was  ready,  at  call,  to  wait  and 
watch  beside  her  through  the  night. 

"  It  seems  wonderful,"  said  the  Little  Lady  to 
Prima,  when  she  bade  her  good-night,  "  that  my  first 
duty,  on  re-entering  this  dear  home,  should  be  one 
of  service  to  this  poor,  sorrow-stricken  soul ;  and 
that  Patella,  with  her  humble  ministrations,  should 
be  able  to  bring  to  her,  in  her  hour  of  anguish,  an 
unselfish  succor  such  as  all  her  lost  wealth  could 
never  buy." 


CHAPTER  XXV. 

LAST  WORDS. 

MY  story  is  told,  and  only  a  few  words  remain 
to  be  said. 

Magna  Patria,  when  last  heard  from,  was  enjoying 
a  full  measure  of  peace  and  prosperity.  The  novel 
idea  is  abroad  in  the  realm  that  the  great  body  of  the 
good  people  who  pay  for  carrying  on  their  own  gov 
ernment  may,  possibly,  be  better  served  by  trained 
and  skilled  officials,  than  by  raw  hands,  or  by  place- 
hunters  and  spoils-men,  and  that  fitness  for  special 
duty  is  as  safe  a  rule  in  the  conduct  of  public  affairs 
as  in  the  domain  of  private  industry.  With  this  and 
other  sound  doctrines  as  the  basis  of  social  and  po 
litical  order,  the  Sisterhood  need  fear  no  adverse 
fortunes. 

Novus  never  reappeared  in  the  Imperial  City. 
He  led,  for  some  time,  a  vagabond  life,  in  distant 
foreign  capitals,  seen  and  shunned  by  his  roving 
compatriots,  and  gradually  fell  into  such  obscurity 
that  whether  he  were  dead  or  alive  few  people  knew, 
and  still  fewer  cared  to  know.  A  small  portion  of 
Gloriosa's  separate  property  was  identified  and  res 
cued  from  the  general  wreck  of  his  estate,  providing 
her  with  a  scanty  income,  and  enabling  her  to  flut- 
278 


LAST  WORDS.  279 

ter,  with  clipped  wings  and  faded  plumage,  in  the 
gay  parterres  of  Societas.  The  ancient  friendship 
with  Prima,  revived  in  the  shadows  of  her  distress, 
became  the  best  solace  of  her  semi-widowed  state. 

Stella  was  traced,  across  the  sea,  to  the  home  of 
her  ancestors,  whither  she  betook  herself,  with  some 
of  her  kinsfolk,  where  she  is  said  to  have  made  a 
second  marriage  which,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  proved 
better  than  her  first. 

Patella  was  tenderly  cared  for  in  her  declining 
years.  The  Princess,  placing  her  in  the  front  rank 
of  the  unselfish  and  devoted  spirits  of  her  sex,  has 
never  yet  been  able  to  put  a  limit  to  the  multitude 
of  the  sins  of  Domesticus  which  are  covered  by  the 
virtues  of  Patella. 

Vindex  made  unavailing  search  for  the  last  of  the 
line  of  Furax,  for  whom  the  unclaimed  sestertia 
were  kept  in  safe  deposit.  As  of  old,  the  skilled 
advocate  and  wise  counsellor,  he  came,  at  last,  while 
unwilling  to  make  any  admissions,  to  be  half  ready 
to  take  it  as  proved,  in  the  inner  tribunal  and  shrine 
of  conscience,  that  the  truest  sense  of  justice  and  the 
highest  rule  of  honesty  may  sometimes  be  found, 
beyond  and  above  the  decrees  of  the  Forum,  or  the 
mandates  of  the  Law,  in  a  woman's  unreasoning  in 
stinct. 

Juventus  came  rapidly  to  the  front  rank  of  his 
calling.  He  is  satisfied  with  the  repute  and  the  sub 
stantial  rewards  he  has  gained,  and  with  the  assured 
certainty  of  leaving  to  his  children  and  Prima's  a 
name  identified  with  the  results  of  a  career  of  hon- 


28o  DOMESTIC  US. 

orable  toil.  He  foresees  a  growing  conflict  between 
the  interests  of  laboring  men  and  their  employers, 
but  he  believes  that  the  issue  will  finally  be  resolved, 
not  by  the  subversion  of  law,  but  by  the  establish 
ment  of  a  more  enlightened  reciprocity  between 
these  mutually  dependent  interests ;  and  while  he 
would  have  no  man  eat  who  will  not  work,  he  hopes 
for  the  time  when  every  willing  worker  shall  have 
his  due  portion  meted  out  to  him,  according  to  the 
rule  of  justice  and  the  spirit  of  a  true  humanity. 

Prima,  long  ago,  became  the  centre  of  a  radiant 
circle  whose  bright  philosophy  of  life  takes  no  ac 
count  of  Societas  and  her  shams.  It  asserts  the  para 
mount  seriousness  of  work  and  the  permissible  gay- 
ety  of  play.  It  teaches  that  labor  is  the  prime  factor 
of  human  happiness,  as  it  is  the  first  necessity  of  hu 
man  existence  and  the  sole  source  of  permanent 
wealth.  It  believes  that  contentment  is  better  than 
riches,  and  that  there  is  nothing,  earthly,  nearer 
heaven  than  home.  On  this  broad  basis,  it  can  admit 
to  its  companionship  almost  any  one,  except  the 
young  men  who  fancy  they  cannot  marry  without 
fortunes,  and  the  young  women  who  fear  to  wed 
without  doweries. 

By  this  happy  circle  the  Princess  is  held  in  high 
esteem.  She  is  an  accepted  oracle,  with  no  ambi 
guity  in  her  utterances.  Her  long  and  hard  strug 
gles  with  adverse  forces  in  the  march  and  battle  of 
life  have  wrought  out  a  wealth  of  experience  from 
whose  ample  stores  she  is  ever  ready  to  impart  help 
and  encouragement  to  her  struggling  sisters.  Hav- 


LAST  WORDS.  28l 

ing  solved  the  problem  of  Domesticus  by  her  self- 
sustained  supremacy  on  his  own  ground,  she  is 
striving  to  bring  into  the  bewildering  sphere  of  his 
activities,  the  elements  of  training  and  education 
which  common  sense  and  the  universal  judgment 
of  mankind  demand  in  all  other  departments  of 
service.  While  her  heart  and  her  hands  are  fully 
occupied  in  maintaining  many  other  good  works,  she 
knows  of  none  whose  use  is  more  necessary,  or 
whose  results  may  be  more  beneficent. 

The  Prince  is  a  confirmed  optimist.  The  disci 
pline  of  life  has  mellowed  and  refined  his  being. 
Some  fruits,  shaken  from  the  tree,  or  plucked  with 
rude  hand,  ripen  better  in  the  dark  than  in  the  sun 
shine  and  on  the  native  stock.  So  it  has  been  with 
his  better  nature,  which,  in  his  advancing  years,  is 
suffused  with  the  glow  of  a  true  sympathy.  He  is 
in  accord  with  the  Princess  in  the  constant  faith  that 
there  is  more  happiness  than  misery  in  the  world ; 
more  good  than  evil;  more  truth  than  falsehood; 
more  honest  men  than  rogues ;  that  the  human 
race,  in  spite  of  all  its  blunders  and  stumblings, 
is  moving  forward  and  not  backward,  and  that  in 
its  bright  future,  under  a  better  guidance  than  our 
own,  there  is  hope  for  us  all,  including  DOMESTICUS. 


THE    END. 


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THE  LADY  OR  THE  TIGER? 

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MY  HOUSE:   AN  IDEAL. 

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SOCRATES. 

A  translati  m  of  the  Apology,  Cnto,  and  \  arts  of  the  Phsedo  of  1  lato. 
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A  DAY  IN  ATHENS  WITH   SOCRATES. 

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MRS.  BURNETT'S  EARLIER  STORIES. 

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VALENTINO. 

BY  WILLIAM  WALDORF  ASTOR. 
I  volume,   I2mo,  handsomely  bound,          -  $2.00 

41  Tht  style  o/tkt  bock  is  unaffected  and  musical.  The  descriptions  are  vivid  an* 
tht  dialogue  is  interesting.  *  *  *  Incidents  are  presented  ivith  dramatic  urf.  The 
movement  of  the  story  never  draffs.  '1  he  actors  are  natural  ,md  interes  ing,  and  the 
accessories  are  highly picturesque.  Thf  views  of  ,i  strangely  dtbased  society,  splendid 
in  its  lururiet  and  savage  in  its  brutalities,  a  society  -.t'hii  k  'loved  everything  beautiful 
except  virtue,  and  filled  the  palates  of  the  great  ivith  poets,  painters,  prisoners  and 
bravos,  are  extremely  effective." — NEW  YORK  TKIBUNB. 


STORIES  BY  AMERICAN  AUTHORS. 

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POPULAR  DOLLAR  NOVELS. 

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THE  LAST  MEETING.  A  WHEEL  OF  FIRE. 

By  BRANDER  MATTHEWS.  By  ARLO  BATES. 

ROSES  OF  SHADOW.  WITHIN  THE  CAPES. 

By  T.  R.  SULLIVAN.  By  HOWARD  PVLE. 

COLOR  STUDIES.  ACROSS  THE  CHASM 

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